[HN Gopher] How elites could shape mass preferences as AI reduce...
___________________________________________________________________
How elites could shape mass preferences as AI reduces persuasion
costs
Author : 50kIters
Score : 450 points
Date : 2025-12-04 08:38 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arxiv.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (arxiv.org)
| intermerda wrote:
| https://newrepublic.com/post/203519/elon-musk-ai-chatbot-gro...
|
| > Musk's AI Bot Says He's the Best at Drinking Pee and Giving
| Blow Jobs
|
| > Grok has gotten a little too enthusiastic about praising Elon
| Musk.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > Musk acknowledged the mix-up Thursday evening, writing on X
| that "Grok was unfortunately manipulated by adversarial
| prompting into saying absurdly positive things about me."
|
| > "For the record, I am a fat retard," he said.
|
| > In a separate post, Musk quipped that "if I up my game a lot,
| the future AI might say 'he was smart ... for a human.'"
| ben_w wrote:
| Is Musk bipolar, or is this kind of thing an affectation?
|
| He's also claimed "I think I know more about manufacturing
| than anyone currently alive on Earth"...
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| He's smart enough to know when he took it too far.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| You have to keep in mind that not all narcissists are
| literal-minded man-babies. Musk might simply have the
| capacity for self-deprecating humor.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > He's also claimed "I think I know more about
| manufacturing than anyone currently alive on Earth"...
|
| You should know that ChatGPT agrees!
|
| "Who on earth th knows the most about manufacturing, if you
| had to pick one individual"
|
| Answer: _"If I had to pick one individual on Earth who
| likely knows the most--in breadth, depth, and lived
| experience--about modern manufacturing, there is a clear
| front-runner: Elon Musk.
|
| Not because of fame, but because of what he has personally
| done in manufacturing, which is unique in modern history."_
|
| - https://chatgpt.com/share/693152a8-c154-8009-8ecd-c21541e
| e9c...
| otikik wrote:
| Just narcissistic. And on drugs.
| lukan wrote:
| That response is more humble than I would have guessed, but
| he still does not even acknowledge, that his "truthseeking"
| AI is manipulated to say nice things specifically about him.
| Maybe he does not even realize it himself?
|
| Hard to tell, I have never been surrounded by yes sayers all
| the time praising me for every fart I took, so I cannot
| relate to that situation (and don't really want to).
|
| But the problem remains, he is in control of the "truth" of
| his AI, the other AI companies likewise - and they might be
| better at being subtle about it.
| jl6 wrote:
| > Historically, elites could shape support only through limited
| instruments like schooling and mass media
|
| Schooling and mass media are expensive things to control. Surely
| reducing the cost of persuasion opens persuasion up to more
| players?
| teekert wrote:
| Exactly my first thought, maybe AI means the democratization of
| persuasion? Printing press much?
|
| Sure the the Big companies have all the latest coolness. But
| also don't have a moat.
| ares623 wrote:
| Mass Persuasion needs two things: content creation and
| distribution.
|
| Sure AI could democratise content creation but distribution is
| still controlled by the elite. And content creation just got
| much cheaper for them.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| Distribution isn't controlled by elites; half of their
| meetings are seething about the "problem" people trust
| podcasts and community information dissemination rather than
| elite broadcast networks.
|
| We no longer live in the age of broadcast media, but of
| social networked media.
| ares623 wrote:
| But the social networks are owned by them though?
| zmgsabst wrote:
| This is my opinion, as well:
|
| - elites already engage in mass persuasion, from media
| consensus to astroturfed thinktanks to controlling grants in
| academia
|
| - total information capacity is capped, ie, people only have so
| much time and interest
|
| - AI massively lowers the cost of content, allowing more people
| to produce it
|
| Therefore, AI is likely to displace mass persuasion from
| current elites -- particularly given public antipathy and the
| ability of AI to, eg, rapidly respond across the full spectrum
| to existing influence networks.
|
| In much the same way podcasters displaced traditional mass
| media pundits.
| ben_w wrote:
| > Schooling and mass media are expensive things to control
|
| Expensive to run, sure. But I don't see why they'd be expensive
| to control. Most UK are required to support collective worship
| of a "wholly or mainly of a broadly christian character"[0],
| and used to have Section 28[1] which was interpreted
| defensively in most places and made it difficult even discuss
| the topic in sex ed lessons or defend against homophobic
| bullying.
|
| USA had the Hays Code[2], the FCC Song[3] is Eric Idle's
| response to being fined for swearing on radio. Here in Europe
| we keep hearing about US schools banning books for various
| reasons.
|
| [0]
| https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_28
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hays_Code
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_Song
| alwa wrote:
| [0] seems to be dated 1994-is it still current? I'm curious
| how it's evolved (or not) through the rather dramatic
| demographic shifts there over the intervening 30 years
| ben_w wrote:
| So far as I can tell, it's still around. That's why I
| linked to the .gov domain rather than any other source.
|
| Though I suppose I could point at legislation.gov.uk:
|
| * https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22wholly+or+mainly+of+a+broadl
| y+c...
|
| * https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/31/schedule/20/
| cro...
| crote wrote:
| Do you rather want a handful of channels with well-known
| biases, or thousands of channels of unknown origin?
|
| If you're trying to avoid being persuaded, being _aware_ of
| your opponents sounds like the far better option to me.
| taurath wrote:
| We have no guardrails on our private surveillance society. I long
| for the day that we solve problems facing regular people like
| access to education, hunger, housing, and cost of living.
| jack_tripper wrote:
| _> I long for the day that we solve problems facing regular
| people like access to education, hunger, housing, and cost of
| living._
|
| That was only for a short fraction of human history only
| lasting in the period between post-WW2 and before globalisation
| kicked into high gear, but people miss the fact that was only a
| short exception from the norm, basically a rounding error in
| terms of the length of human civilisation.
|
| Now, society is reverting back to factory settings of human
| history, which has always been a feudalist type society of a
| small elite owning all the wealth and ruling the masses of
| people by wars, poverty, fear, propaganda and oppression. Now
| the mechanisms by which that feudalist society is achieved
| today are different than in the past, but the underlying human
| framework of greed and consolidation of wealth and power is the
| same as it was 2000+ years ago, except now the games suck and
| the bread is mouldy.
|
| The wealth inequality we have today, as bad as it is now, is as
| best as it will ever be moving forward. It's only gonna get
| worse each passing day. And despite all the political talks and
| promises on "fixing" wealth inequality, housing, etc, there's
| nothing to fix here, since the financial system is working as
| designed, this is a feature not a bug.
| veltas wrote:
| I think this is true unfortunately, and the question of how
| we get back to a liberal and social state has many factors:
| how do we get the economy working again, how do we create
| trustworthy institutions, avoid bloat and decay in services,
| etc. There are no easy answers, I think it's just hard work
| and it might not even be possible. People suggesting magic
| wands are just populists and we need only look at history to
| study why these kinds of suggestions don't work.
| huijzer wrote:
| It's funny how it's completely appropriate to talk about
| how the elites are getting more and more power, but if you
| then start looking deeper into it you're suddenly a
| conspiracy theorist and hence bad. Who came up with the
| term conspiracy theorist anyway and that we should be
| afraid of it?
| jack_tripper wrote:
| _> how do we get the economy working again_
|
| Just like we always have: a world war, and then the economy
| works amazing for the ones left on top of the rubble pile
| where they get unionized high wage jobs and amazing
| retirements at an early age for a few decades, while
| everyone else will be left toiling away to make stuff for
| cheap in sweatshops in exchange for currency from the
| victors who control the global economy and trade routes.
|
| The next time the monopoly board gets flipped will only be
| a variation of this, but not a complete framework rewrite.
| jinjin2 wrote:
| > society is reverting back to factory settings of human
| history, which has always been a feudalist type society of a
| small elite owning all the wealth
|
| The word "always" is carrying a lot of weight here. This has
| really only been true for the last 10,000 years or so, since
| the introduction of agriculture. We lived as egalitarian
| bands of hunter gatherers for hundreds of thousands of years
| before that. Given the magnitude of difference in timespan, I
| think it is safe to say that that is the "default setting".
| jack_tripper wrote:
| _> We lived as egalitarian bands of hunter gatherers for
| hundreds of thousands of years before that._
|
| Only if you consider intra-group egalitarianism of tribal
| hunter gatherer societies. But tribes would constantly go
| to war with each other in search of expanding to better
| territories with more resources, and the defeated tribe
| would have its men killed or enslaved, and the women bred
| to expand the tribe population.
|
| So you forgot that part that involved all the killing,
| enslavement and rape, but other than that, yes, the
| victorious tribes were quite egalitarian.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > and the defeated tribe would have its men killed or
| enslaved, and the women bred to expand the tribe
| population.
|
| I'm not aware of any archaeological evidence of massacres
| during the paleolithic. Which archaeological sites would
| support the assertions you are making here?
| jack_tripper wrote:
| Population density on the planet back then was also low
| enough to not cause mass wars and generate mass graves,
| but killing each other over valuable resources is the
| most common human trait after reproduction and seek of
| food and shelter.
| lurk2 wrote:
| We were talking about the paleolithic era. I'll take your
| comment to imply that you don't have any information that
| I don't have.
|
| > but killing each other over valuable resources is the
| most common human trait after reproduction and seek of
| food and shelter.
|
| This isn't reflected in the archaeological record, it
| isn't reflected by the historical record, and you haven't
| provided any good reason why anyone should believe it.
| pyrale wrote:
| The above poster is asking you whether factual
| informations support your claim.
|
| Your personal opinion about why such informations may be
| hard to find only weakens your claim.
| phantasmish wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Before_Civilization
|
| Last I checked there hadn't been major shifts away from
| the perspective this represents, in anthropology.
|
| It was used as a core text in one of my classes in
| college, though that was a couple decades ago. I recall
| being confused about why it was such a big deal, because
| I'd not encountered the "peaceful savage" idea in any
| serious context, but I gather it was widespread in the
| '80s and earlier.
| pyrale wrote:
| The link you give documents warfare that happened
| significantly later than the era discussed by the above
| poster.
|
| To suggest that the lack of evidence is enough to support
| continuity of a behaviour is also flawed reasoning: we
| have many examples of previously unknown social behaviour
| that emerged at some point, line the emergence of states
| or the use of art.
|
| Sometimes, it's ok to simply say that we're not sure,
| rather than to project our existing condition.
| lurk2 wrote:
| Well, this one is at least pertinent to the time period
| we're discussing:
|
| > One-half of the people found in a Mesolithic cemetery
| in present-day Jebel Sahaba, Sudan dating to as early as
| 13,000 years ago had died as a result of warfare between
| seemingly different racial groups with victims bearing
| marks of being killed by arrow heads, spears and club,
| prompting some to call it the first race war.
| lingrush4 wrote:
| What an absurd request. Where's your archaeological
| evidence that humans were egalitarian 10000+ years?
|
| The idea that we didn't have wars in the paleolithic era
| is so outlandish that it requires significant evidence.
| You have provided none.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > What an absurd request.
|
| If you can show me archaeological evidence of mass graves
| or a settlement having been razed during the paleolithic
| I would recant my claims. This isn't really a high bar.
|
| > Where's your archaeological evidence that humans were
| egalitarian 10000+ years?
|
| I never made this claim. Structures of domination precede
| human development; they can be observed in animals. What
| we don't observe up until around 10,000 years ago is
| anything approaching the sorts of systems of jack_tripper
| described, namely:
|
| > which has always been a feudalist type society of a
| small elite owning all the wealth and ruling the masses
| of people by wars, poverty, fear, propaganda and
| oppression.
|
| > The idea that we didn't have wars in the paleolithic
| era is so outlandish that it requires significant
| evidence.
|
| If it's so outlandish where is your evidence that these
| wars occurred?
|
| > You have provided none.
|
| How would I provide you with evidence of something that
| didn't happen?
| jinjin2 wrote:
| Sure, nobody is claiming that hunter gatherers were
| saints. Just because they lived in egalitarian clans, it
| doesn't mean that they didn't occasionally do bad things.
|
| But one key differentiator is that they didn't have the
| logistics to have soldiers. With no surplus to pay
| anyone, there was no way build up an army, and with no-
| one having the ability to tell others to go to war or
| force them to do so, the scale of conflicts and
| skirmishes were a lot more limited.
|
| So while there might have been a constant state of minor
| skirmishes, like we see in any population of territorial
| animals, all-out totalitarian war was a rare occurrence.
| lurk2 wrote:
| Even within the last 10,000 years, most of those systems
| looked nothing like the hereditary stations we associate
| with feudalism, and it's focused within the last 4,000
| years that any of those systems scaled, and then only in
| areas that were sufficiently urban to warrant the
| structures.
| oblio wrote:
| Back then there were so few people around and expectations
| for quality of life were so low that if you didn't like
| your neighbors you could just go to the middle of nowhere
| and most likely find an area which had enough resources for
| your meager existence. Or you'd die trying, which was
| probably what happened most of the time.
|
| That entire approach to life died when agriculture
| appeared. Remnants of that lifestyle were nomadic peoples
| and the last groups to be successful were the Mongols and
| up until about 1600, the Cossacks.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > which has always been a feudalist type society of a small
| elite owning all the wealth and ruling the masses of people
| by wars, poverty, fear, propaganda and oppression.
|
| This isn't an historical norm. The majority of human history
| occurred without these systems of domination, and getting
| people to play along has historically been so difficult that
| colonizers resort to eradicating native populations and
| starting over again. The technologies used to force people
| onto the plantation have become more sophisticated, but in
| most of the world that has involved enfranchisement more than
| oppression; most of the world is tremendously better off
| today than it was even 20 years ago.
|
| Mass surveillance and automated propaganda technologies pose
| a threat to this dynamic, but I won't be worried until they
| have robotic door kickers. The bad guys are always going to
| be there, but it isn't obvious that they are going to
| triumph.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > The majority of human history occurred without these
| systems of domination,
|
| you mean hunter/gatherers before the establishment of
| dominant "civilizations"? That history ended about 5000
| years ago.
| crote wrote:
| > The wealth inequality we have today, as bad as it is, is as
| best as it will ever be moving forward. It's only gonna get
| worse.
|
| Why?
|
| As the saying goes, the people need bread and circuses. Delve
| too deeply and you risk another French Revolution. And right
| now, a lot of people in supposedly-rich Western countries are
| having their basic existance threatened by the greed of the
| elite.
|
| Feudalism only works when you give back enough power and
| resources to the layers below you. The king _depends_ on his
| vassals to provide money and military services. Try to act
| like a tyrant, and you end up being forced to sign the Magna
| Carta.
|
| We've already seen a healthcare CEO being executed in broad
| daylight. If wealth inequality continues to worsen, do you
| really believe that'll be the last one?
| zwnow wrote:
| > Delve too deeply and you risk another French Revolution.
|
| Whats too deeply? Given the circumstances in the USA I dont
| see no revolution happening. Same goes for extremely poor
| countries. When will the exploiters heads roll? I dont see
| anyone willing to fight the elite. A lot of them are even
| celebrated in countries like India.
| jack_tripper wrote:
| Yep, exactly. If the poor people had the power to change
| their oppressive regimes, then North Korea or Cuban
| leaders wouldn't exist.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > And right now, a lot of people in supposedly-rich Western
| countries are having their basic existance threatened by
| the greed of the elite.
|
| Which people are having their existences threatened by the
| elite?
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| As long as you have people gleefully celebrating it or
| providing some sort of narrative to justify it even
| partially then no.
|
| >And right now, a lot of people in supposedly-rich Western
| countries are having their basic existance threatened by
| the greed of the elite.
|
| Can you elaborate on that?
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Sounds like we need another world war to reset things for the
| survivors.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > I long for the day that we solve problems facing regular
| people like access to education, hunger, housing, and cost of
| living.
|
| EDUCATION:
|
| - Global literacy: 90% today vs 30%-35% in 1925
|
| - Prinary enrollment: 90-95% today vs 40-50% in 1925
|
| - Secondary enrollment: 75-80% today vs <10% in 1925
|
| - Tertiary enrollment: 40-45% today vs <2% in 1925
|
| - Gender gap: near parity today vs very high in 1925
|
| HUNGER
|
| Undernourished people: 735-800m people today (9-10% of
| population) vs 1.2 to 1.4 billion people in 1925 (55-60% of the
| population)
|
| HOUSING
|
| - quality: highest every today vs low in 1925
|
| - affordability: worst in 100 years in many cities
|
| COST OF LIVING:
|
| Improved dramatically for most of the 20th century, but much of
| that progress reverse in the last 20 years. The cost of goods /
| stuff plummeted, but housing, health, and education became
| unaffordable compared to incomes.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| You're comparing with 100 years ago. The OP is comparing with
| 25 years ago, where we are seeing significant regression (as
| you also pointed out), and the trend forward is increasingly
| regressive.
|
| We can spend $T to shove ultimately ad-based AI down
| everyone's throats but we can't spend $T to improve
| everyone's lives.
| carlCarlCarlCar wrote:
| Yea we do:
|
| Shut off gadgets unless absolutely necessary
|
| Entropy will continue to kill off the elders
|
| Ability to learn independently
|
| ...They have not rewritten physics. Just the news.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| this is next level algorithm
|
| imagine someday there is a child that trust chatgpt more than his
| mother
| MangoToupe wrote:
| I'd wager the child already exists who trusts chatgpr more than
| its own eyes.
| psychoslave wrote:
| That will be when these tools will be granted the legal power
| to enforce a prohibition to approach the kid on any person
| causing dangerous human influence.
| ben_w wrote:
| > imagine someday there is a child that trust chatgpt more than
| his mother
|
| I trusted my mother when I was a teen; she believed in the
| occult, dowsing, crystal magic, homeopathy, bach flower
| remedies, etc., so I did too.
|
| ChatGPT might have been an improvement, or made things much
| worse, depending on how sycophantic it was being.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| > Historically, elites could shape support only through limited
| instruments like schooling and mass media
|
| What is AI if not a form of mass media
| eCa wrote:
| The "historically" does some lifting there. Historically,
| before the internet, mass media was produced in one version and
| then distributed. With AI for example news reporting can be
| tailored to each consumer.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| > With AI for example news reporting can be tailored to each
| consumer.
|
| Yea but it's still fundamentally produced (trained) once and
| then distributed.
| jrflowers wrote:
| "Mass media" didn't use to mean my computer mumbling gibberish
| to itself with no user input in Notepad on a pc that's not
| connected to the internet
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| ML has been used for influence for like a decade now right? my
| understanding was that mining data to track people, as well as
| influencing them for ends like their ad-engagement are things
| that are somewhat mature already. I'm sure LLMs would be a boost,
| and they've been around with wide usage for at least 3 years now.
|
| My concern isn't so much people being influenced on a whim, but
| people's beliefs and views being carefully curated and shaped
| since childhood. iPad kids have me scared for the future.
| georgefrowny wrote:
| Quite right. "Grok/Alexa, is this true?" being an authority
| figure makes it so much easier.
|
| Much as everyone drags Trump for repeating the last thing he
| heard as fact, it's a turbocharged version of something lots of
| humans do, which is to glom onto the first thing they're told
| about a thing and get oddly emotional about it when later
| challenged. (Armchair neuroscience moment: perhaps Trump just
| has less object permanence so everything always seems new to
| him!)
|
| Look at the (partly humorous, but partly not) outcry over Pluto
| being a planet for a big example.
|
| I'm very much not immune to it - it feels distinctly
| uncomfortable to be told that something you thought to be true
| for a long time is, in fact, false. Especially when there's an
| element of "I know better than you" or "not many people know
| this".
|
| As an example, I remember being told by a teacher that
| fluorescent lighting was highly efficient (true enough, at the
| time), but that turning one on used several hours' lighting
| worth of energy for to the starter. I carried that proudly with
| me for far too long and told my parents that we shouldn't turn
| off the garage lighting when we left it for a bit. When someone
| with enough buttons told me that was bollocks and to think
| about it, I remember it specifically bring internally quite
| huffy until I did, and realised that a dinky plastic starter
| and the tube wouldn't be able to dissipate, say 80Wh (2 hours
| for a 40W tube) in about a second at a power of over 250kW.1
|
| It's a silly example, but I think that if you can get a fact
| planted in a brain early enough, especially before enough
| critical thinking or experience exist to question it, the time
| it spends lodged there makes it surprisingly hard and
| uncomfortable to shift later. Especially if it's something that
| can't be disproven by simply thinking about it.
|
| Systems that allow that process to be automated are potentially
| incredibly dangerous. At least mass media manipulation requires
| actual people to conduct it. Fiddling some weights is almost
| free in comparison, and you can deliver that output to only
| certain people, and in private.
|
| 1: A less innocent one the actually can have policy effects: a
| lot of people have also internalised and defend to the death a
| similar "fact" that the embedded carbon in a wind turbine takes
| decades or centuries to repay, when if fact it's on the order
| of a year. But to change this requires either a source so
| trusted that it can uproot the idea entirely and replace it, or
| you have to get into the relative carbon costs of steel and
| fibreglass and copper windings and magnets and the amount of
| each in a wind turbine and so on and on. Thousands of times
| more effort than when it was first related to them as a fact.
| rightbyte wrote:
| > Look at the (partly humorous, but partly not) outcry over
| Pluto being a planet for a big example.
|
| Wasn't that a change of definition of what is a planet when
| Eris was discovered? You could argue both should be called
| planets.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| I think the problem is we'd then have to include a high
| number of _other_ objects further than Pluto and Eris, so
| it makes more sense to change the definition in a way
| 'planet' is a bit more exclusive.
| georgefrowny wrote:
| Pretty much. If Pluto is a planet, then there are
| potentially thousands of objects that could be discovered
| over time that would then also be planets, plus updated
| models over the last century of the gravitational effects
| of, say, Ceres and Pluto, that showed that neither were
| capable of "dominating" their orbits for some sense of the
| word. So we (or the IAU, rather) couldn't maintain "there
| are nine planets" as a fact either way without
| grandfathering Pluto into the nine arbitrarily due to some
| kind of planetaceous vibes.
|
| But the point is that millions of people were suddenly told
| that their long-held fact "the are nine planets, Pluto is
| one" was now wrong (per IAU definitions at least). And the
| reaction for many wasn't "huh, cool, maybe thousands you
| say?" it was quite vocal outrage. Much of which was
| humourously played up for laughs and likes, I know, but
| some people really did seem to take it personally.
| Amezarak wrote:
| I think most people who really cared about it just think
| it's absurd that everyone has to accept planets being
| arbitrarily reclassified because a very small group of
| astronomers says so. Plenty of well-known astronomers
| thought so as well, and there are obvious problems with
| the "cleared orbit" clause, which is applied totally
| arbitrarily. The majority of the IAU did not even vote on
| the proposal, as it happened after most people had left
| the conference.
|
| For example:
|
| > Dr Alan Stern, who leads the US space agency's New
| Horizons mission to Pluto and did not vote in Prague,
| told BBC News: "It's an awful definition; it's sloppy
| science and it would never pass peer review - for two
| reasons." [...] Dr Stern pointed out that Earth, Mars,
| Jupiter and Neptune have also not fully cleared their
| orbital zones. Earth orbits with 10,000 near-Earth
| asteroids. Jupiter, meanwhile, is accompanied by 100,000
| Trojan asteroids on its orbital path." [...] "I was not
| allowed to vote because I was not in a room in Prague on
| Thursday 24th. Of 10,000 astronomers, 4% were in that
| room - you can't even claim consensus."
| http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5283956.stm
|
| A better insight might be how easy it is to persuade
| millions of people with a small group of experts and a
| media campaign that a fact they'd known all their life is
| "false" and that anyone who disagrees is actually
| irrational - the Authorities have decided the issue! This
| is an extremely potent persuasion technique "the elites"
| use all the time.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Ye the cleared path thing is strange.
|
| However, I'd say that either both Eris and Pluto are
| planets or neither, so it is not too strange to
| reclassify "planet" to exclude them.
|
| You could go with "9 biggest objects by volume in the
| sun's orbit" or something equally arbitrary.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The Scientific American version has prettier graphs but
| this paper [1] goes through various measures for
| planetary classification. Pluto doesn't fit in with the
| eight planets.
|
| [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6613298_What
| _is_a_P...
| georgefrowny wrote:
| I mean there's always the a the implied asterisk "per IAU
| definitions". Pluto hasn't actually changed or vanished.
| It's no less or more interesting as an object for the
| change.
|
| It's not irrational to challenge the IAU definition, and
| there are scads of alternatives (what scientist doesn't
| love coming up with a new ontology?).
|
| I think, however, it's perhaps a bit irrational to
| actually be _upset_ by the change because you find it
| painful to update a simple fact like "there are nine
| planets" (with no formal mention of what planet means
| specifically, other than "my DK book told me so when I
| was 5 and by God, I loved that book") to "there are eight
| planets, per some group of astronomers, and actually
| we've increasingly discovered it's complicated what
| 'planet' even means and the process hasn't stopped yet".
| In fact, you can keep the old fact too with its own
| asterisk "for 60 years between Pluto's discovery and the
| gradual discovery of the Kuiper belt starting in the 90s,
| Pluto was generally considered a planet due to its then-
| unique status in the outer solar system, and still is for
| some people, including some astronomers".
|
| And that's all for the most minor, inconsequential thing
| you can imagine: what a bunch of dorks call a tiny frozen
| rock 5 billion kilometres away, that wasn't even noticed
| until the 30s. It just goes to show the potential
| sticking power of a fact once learned, especially if you
| can get it in early and let it sit.
| Amezarak wrote:
| I think what you were missing is that the crux of the
| problem is that this obscured the fact that a small
| minority of astronomers at a conference without any
| scientific consensus, asserted something and you and
| others uncritically accepted that they had the authority
| to do so, simply based on media reports of what had
| occurred. This is a great example of an elite influence
| campaign, although I doubt it was deliberately
| coordinated outside of a small community in the IAU. But
| it's mainly that which actually upsets people: people
| they've never heard of without authority declaring
| something arbitrarily true and the sense they are being
| forced to accept it. It's not Pluto itself. It's that a
| small clique in the IAU ran a successful influence
| campaign without any social or even scientific consensus
| and they're pressured to accept the results.
|
| You can say well it's just the IAU definition, but again
| the media in textbook writers were persuaded as you were
| and deemed this the "correct" definition without any
| consensus over the meaning of the word being formed
| prior.
|
| The definition of a planet is not a new problem. It was
| an obvious issue the minute we discovered that there were
| rocks, invisible to the naked eye floating in space. It
| is a common categorization problem with any natural
| phenomena. You cannot squeeze nature into neat boxes.
|
| Also, you failed to address the fact that the definition
| is applied entirely arbitrarily. The definition was made
| with the purpose of excluding Pluto, because people felt
| that they would have to add more planets and they didn't
| want to do that. Therefore, they claimed that Pluto did
| not meet the criteria, but ignore the fact that other
| planets also do not meet the criteria. This is just
| nakedly silly.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > But the point is that millions of people were suddenly
| told that their long-held fact
|
| This seems to be part of why people get so mad about
| gender. The Procrustean Bed model: alter people to fit
| the classification.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > alter people to fit the classification.
|
| This is why people get so mad about "gender."
| jll29 wrote:
| The problem is that re-defining definitions brings in
| chaos and inconsitency in science and publications.
|
| Redefining what a "planet" (science) is or a "line"
| (mathematics) may be useful but after such a speech act
| creates ambiguity for each mention of either term --
| namely, whether the old or new definition was meant.
|
| Additionally, different people use their own personal
| definition for things, each contradicting with each
| other.
|
| A better way would be to use concept identifiers made up
| of the actual words followed by a numeric ID that
| indicates author and definition version number, and re-
| definitions would lead to only those being in use from
| that point in time onwards ("moon-9634", "planet-349",
| "line-0", "triangle-23"). Versioning is a good thing, and
| disambiguating words that name different concepts via
| precise notation is also a good thing where that matters
| (e.g., in the sciences).
|
| A first approach in that direction is WordNet, but
| outside of science (people tried to disentangle different
| senses of the same words and assign unique numbers to
| each).
| isolli wrote:
| Time to bring up a pet peeve of mine: we should change the
| definition of a moon. It's not right to call a 1km-wide
| rock orbiting millions of miles from Jupiter a moon.
| komali2 wrote:
| Oh man I've been saying this for ages! Neal Stephenson called
| this in "Fall, or Dodge in Hell," wherein the internet is
| destroyed and society permanently changed when someone releases a
| FOSS botnet that anyone can deploy that will pollute the world
| with misinformation about whatever given topic you feed it. In
| the book, the developer kicks it off by making the world disagree
| about whether a random town in Utah was just nuked.
|
| My fear is that some entity, say a State or ultra rich
| individual, can leverage enough AI compute to flood the internet
| with misinformation about whatever it is they want, and the
| ability to refute the misinformation manually will be
| overwhelmed, as will efforts to refute leveraging refutation bots
| so long as the other actor has more compute.
|
| Imagine if the PRC did to your country what it does to Taiwan:
| completely flood your social media with subtly tuned han
| supremacist content in an effort to culturally imperialise us. AI
| could increase the firehose enough to majorly disrupt a larger
| country.
| narrator wrote:
| Everyone can shape mass preferences because propaganda campaigns
| previously only available to the elite are now affordable. e.g
| Video production.
| energy123 wrote:
| I posit that the effectiveness of your propaganda is
| proportional to the percentage of attention bandwidth that your
| campaign occupies in the minds of people. If you as an
| individual can drive the same # impressions as Mr. Beast can,
| then you're going to be persuasive whatever your message is.
| But most individuals can't achieve Mr. Beast levels of
| popularity, so they aren't going to be persuasive. Nation
| states, on the other hand, have the compute resources and
| patience to occupy a lot of bandwidth, even if no single
| sockpuppet account they control is that popular.
| narrator wrote:
| This is why when I see an obviously stupid take on X repeated
| almost verbatim by multiple accounts I mute those accounts.
| devsda wrote:
| > Nation states, on the other hand, have the compute
| resources and patience to occupy a lot of bandwidth, even if
| no single sockpuppet account they control is that popular.
|
| If you control the platform where people go, you can easily
| launder popularity by promoting few persons to the top and
| pushing the unwanted entities into the blackhole of
| feeds/bans while hiding behind inconsistent community
| guidelines, algorithmic feeds and shadow bans.
| crote wrote:
| Note that _nothing_ in the article is AI-specific: the entire
| argument is built around the _cost_ of persuasion, with the
| potential of AI to more cheaply generate propaganda as buzzword
| link.
|
| However, exactly the same applies with, say, targeted Facebook
| ads or Russian troll armies. You don't need any AI for this.
| smartmic wrote:
| But AI is next in line as a tool to accelerate this, and it has
| an even greater impact than social media or troll armies. I
| think one lever is working towards "enforced conformity." I
| wrote about some of my thoughts in a blog article[0].
|
| [0]: https://smartmic.bearblog.dev/enforced-conformity/
| citrin_ru wrote:
| But social networks is the reason one needs (benefits from)
| trolls and AI. If you own a traditional media outlet you need
| somehow to convince people to read/watch it. Ads can help but
| it's expensive. LLM can help with creating fake videos but
| computer graphics was already used for this.
|
| With modern algorithmic social networks you instead can game
| the feed and even people who would not choose you media will
| start to see your posts. End even posts they want to see can
| be flooded with comment trying to convince in whatever is
| paid for. It's cheaper than political advertising and not
| bound by the law.
|
| Before AI it was done by trolls on payroll and now they can
| either maintain 10x more fake accounts or completely automate
| fake accounts using AI agents.
| andsoitis wrote:
| Social networks are not a prerequisite for sentiment
| shaping by AI.
|
| Every time you interact with an AI, its responses and
| persuasive capabilities shape how you think.
| andy99 wrote:
| See also https://english.elpais.com/society/2025-03-23/why-
| everything...
|
| https://medium.com/knowable/why-everything-looks-the-same-
| ba...
| themafia wrote:
| People are naturally conform _themselves_ to social
| expectations. You don't need to enforce anything. If you
| alter their perception of those expectations you can
| manipulate them into taking actions under false pretenses.
| It's a abstract form of lying. It's astroturfing at a
| "hyperscale."
|
| The problem is this only seems to work best when the
| technique is used sparingly and the messages are delivered
| through multiple media avenues simultaneously. I think
| there's very weak returns particularly when multiple actors
| use the techniques at the same time in opposition to each
| other and limited to social media. Once people perceive a
| social stale mate they either avoid the issue or use their
| personal experiences to make their decisions.
| go_elmo wrote:
| Good point - its not a previously inexistent mechanism - but AI
| leverages it even more. A russian troll can put out 10x more
| content with automation. Genuine counter-movements (e.g.
| grassroot preferences) might not be as leveraged, causing the
| system to be more heavily influenced by the clearly pursued
| goals (which are often malicious)
| andsoitis wrote:
| > Genuine counter-movements (e.g. grassroot preferences)
| might not be as leveraged
|
| Then that doesn't seem like a (counter) movement.
|
| There are also many "grass roots movements" that I don't like
| and it doesn't make them "good" just because they're "grass
| roots".
| none2585 wrote:
| In this context grass roots would imply the interests of a
| group of common people in a democracy (as opposed to the
| interests of a small group of elites) which ostensibly is
| the point.
| andsoitis wrote:
| I think it is more useful to think of "common people" and
| "the elites" not as separate categories but rather than
| phases on a spectrum, especially when you consider very
| specific interests.
|
| I have some shared interested with "the common people"
| and some with "the elites".
| mdotmertens wrote:
| It's not only about efficiency. When AI is utilized, things
| can become more personal and even more persuasive. If AI
| psychosis exists, it can be easy for untrained minds to
| succumb to these schemes.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > If AI psychosis exists, it can be easy for untrained
| minds to succumb to these schemes.
|
| Evolution by natural selection suggests that this might be
| a filter that yield future generations of humans that are
| more robust and resilient.
| coppernoodles wrote:
| You can't easily apply natural selection to social
| topics. Also, even staying in that mindframe: Being
| vulnerable to AI psychosis doesn't seem to be much of a
| selection pressure, because people usually don't die from
| it, and can have children before it shows, and also with
| it. Non-AI psychosis also still exists after thousands of
| years.
| andsoitis wrote:
| Even if AI psychosis doesn't present selection pressure
| (I don't think there's a way to _know_ a priori), I
| highly doubt it presents an existential risk to the human
| gene pool. Do you think it does?
| citrin_ru wrote:
| AI (LLM) is a force multiplier for troll armies. For the same
| money bad actors can brainwash more people.
| yorwba wrote:
| Alternatively, since brainwashing is a fiction trope that
| doesn't work in the real world, they can brainwash the same
| (0) number of people for less money. Or, more realistically,
| companies selling social media influence operations as a
| service will increase their profit margins by charging the
| same for less work.
| djmips wrote:
| So your thesis is that marketing doesn't work?
| yorwba wrote:
| My thesis is that marketing doesn't brainwash people. You
| can use marketing to increase awareness of your product,
| which in turn increases sales when people would e.g.
| otherwise have bought from a competitor, but you can't
| magically make arbitrary people buy an arbitrary product
| using the power of marketing.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| This. I believe people massively exaggerate the influence
| of social engineering as a form of coping. "they only
| voted for x because they are dumb and blindly fell for
| russian misinformation." reality is more nuanced. It's
| true that marketers for the last century have figured out
| social engineering but it's not some kind of magic
| persuasion tool. People still have free will and choice
| and some ability to discern truth from falsehood.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| so you just object to the semantics of 'brainwashing'? No
| influence operation needs to convince an arbitrary amount
| of people of arbitrary products. In the US nudging a few
| hundred thousand people 10% in one direction wins you an
| election.
| zaptheimpaler wrote:
| Making something 2x cheaper is just a difference in quantity,
| but 100x cheaper and easier becomes a difference in kind as
| well.
| HPsquared wrote:
| "Quantity has a quality of its own."
| SCdF wrote:
| I've only read the abstract, but there is also plenty of
| evidence to suggest that people trust the output of LLMs more
| than other forms of media (or that they should). Partially
| because it feels like it comes from a place of authority, and
| partially because of how self confident AI always sounds.
|
| The LLM bot army stuff is concerning, sure. The real concern
| for me is incredibly rich people with no empathy for you or I,
| having interstitial control of that kind of messaging. See, all
| of the grok ai tweaks over the past however long.
| prox wrote:
| And just see all of history where totalitarians or despotic
| kings were in power.
| andsoitis wrote:
| Do you think these super wealthy people who control AI use
| the AI themselves? Do you think they are also "manipulated"
| by their own tool or do they, somehow, escape that capture?
| pjc50 wrote:
| It's fairly clear from Twitter that it's possible to be a
| victim of your own system. But sycophancy has always been a
| problem for elites. It's very easy to surround yourselves
| with people who always say yes, and now you can have a
| machine do it too.
|
| This is how you get things like the colossal Facebook
| writeoff of "metaverse".
| wongarsu wrote:
| Isn't Grok just built as "the AI Elon Musk wants to use"?
| Starting from the goals of being "maximally truth seeking"
| and having no "woke" alignment and fewer safety rails, to
| the various "tweaks" to the Grok Twitter bot that happen to
| be related to Musk's world view
|
| Even Grok at one point looking up how Musk feels about a
| topic before answering fits that pattern. Not something
| that's healthy or that he would likely prefer when asked,
| but something that would produce answers that he personally
| likes when using it
| andsoitis wrote:
| > Isn't Grok just built as "the AI Elon Musk wants to
| use"?
|
| No
|
| > Even Grok at one point looking up how Musk feels about
| a topic before answering fits that pattern.
|
| So it no longer does?
| vintermann wrote:
| People hate being manipulated. If you feel like you're being
| manipulated but you don't know by who or precisely what they
| want of you, then there's something of an instinct to get
| angry and lash out in unpredictable destructive ways. If
| _nobody_ gets what they want, then at least the manipulators
| will regret messing with you.
|
| This is why social control won't work for long, no matter if
| AI supercharges it. We're already seeing the blowback from
| decades of advertising and public opinion shaping.
| pjc50 wrote:
| People hate _feeling_ manipulated, but they _love_
| propaganda that feeds their prejudices. People voluntarily
| turn on Fox News - even in public spaces - and get mad if
| you turn it off.
|
| Sufficiently effective propaganda produces its own cults.
| People want a sense of purpose and belonging. Sometimes
| even at the expense of their own lives, or (more easily)
| someone else's lives.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| I assume you mention fox news because that represents
| your political bias and that's fine with me. But for the
| sake of honesty i have to point out that the lunacy of
| the fringe left is similar to that of MAGA, just smaller
| maybe. The left outlets spent half of Trumps presidency
| peddling the Russian collusion hoax and 4 years of Biden
| gaslighting everyone that he was a great president and
| not senile, when he was at best mediocre.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > just smaller maybe
|
| This is like peak both-sidesism.
|
| You even openly describe the left's equivalent of MAGA as
| "fringe", FFS.
|
| One party's former "fringe" is now in full control of it.
| And the country's institutions.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| I was both siding in an effort to be as objective as
| possible. The truth is that i'm pretty dismayed at the
| current state of the Democrat party. Socialists like
| Mamdani and Sanders and the squad are way too powerful.
| People who are obsessed with tearing down cultural and
| social institutions and replacing them with performative
| identity politics and fabricated narratives are given
| platforms way bigger then they deserve. The worries of
| average Americans are dismissed. All those are issues
| that are tearing up the Democrat party from the inside. I
| can continue for hours but i don't want to start a
| flamewar of biblical proportions. So all i did was
| present the most balanced view i can muster and you still
| can't acknowledge that there might be truth in what i'm
| saying.
|
| The pendulum swings both ways. MSM has fallen victim to
| partisan politics. Something which Trump recognised and
| exploited back in 2015. Fox news is on the right, CNN,
| ABC et al is on the left.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| If you think "Sanders and the Squad" are powerful you've
| been watching far too much Fox News.
|
| > People who are obsessed with tearing down cultural and
| social institutions and replacing them with performative
| identity politics and fabricated narratives are given
| platforms way bigger then they deserve.
|
| Like the Kennedy Center, USAID, and the Department of
| Education? The immigrants eating cats story? Cutting off
| all refugees except white South Africans?
|
| And your next line says this is the problem with
| _Democrats_?
| hn_acc1 wrote:
| CNN, ABC et al are on the left IN FOX NEWS WORLD only.
| Objectively, they're center-right, just like most of the
| democrat party.
| kelipso wrote:
| That was not even the fringe left. That was proper
| mainstream left. CNN and MANBC were full on peddling the
| Russian collusion hoax for years.
|
| And people blame the right for creating division still?
| Both sideism, huh? Yes, it was both sides.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| And, perhaps ironically, the actual (fringe) left never
| fell for Russiagate.
| pjc50 wrote:
| People close to Trump went to jail for Russian collusion.
| Courts are not perfect but a significantly better route
| to truth than the media. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cr
| iminal_charges_brought_in_th...
|
| There is this odd conspiracy to claim that Biden (81 at
| time of election) was too old and Trump (77) wasn't, when
| Trump has always been visibly less coherent than Biden.
| IMO both of them were clearly too old to be sensible
| candidates, regardless of other considerations.
|
| The UK counterpart is happening at the moment:
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c891403eddet
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| >There is this odd conspiracy to claim that Biden (81 at
| time of election) was too old and Trump (77) wasn't
|
| I try to base my opinions on facts as much as possible.
| Trump is old but he's clearly full of energy, like some
| old people can be. Biden sadly is not. Look at the
| videos, it's painful to see. In his defence he was
| probably much more active then most 80 year olds but in
| no way was he fit to lead a country.
|
| At least in the UK despite the recent lamentable state of
| our political system our politicians are relatively
| young. You won't see octogenarians like pelosi and Biden
| in charge.
| jcranmer wrote:
| From the videos I've seen, Biden reminds me of my
| grandmother in her later years of life, while Trump
| reminds me of my other grandmother... the one with
| dementia. There's just too many videos where Trump
| doesn't seem to entirely realize where he is or what he
| is doing for me to be comfortable.
| blitzar wrote:
| Happy thanksgiving this week
| NoGravitas wrote:
| I would point out that what you call "left outlets" are
| at best center-left. The actual left doesn't believe in
| Russiagate (it was manufactured to ratfuck Bernie before
| being turned against Trump), and has zero love for Biden.
| daveguy wrote:
| Given the amount of evidence that Russia and the Trump
| campaign were working together, it's devoid of reality to
| claim it's a hoax. I hadn't heard the Bernie angle, but
| it's not unreasonable to expect they were aiding Bernie.
| The difference being, I don't think Bernie's campaign was
| colluding with Russian agents, whereas the Trump campaign
| definitely was colluding.
|
| Seriously, who didn't hear about the massive amounts of
| evidence the Trump campaign was colluding other than
| magas drooling over fox and newsmax?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report
|
| https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf
| vintermann wrote:
| To you too: are you talking about other people here, or
| do you concede the possibility that you're falling for
| similar things yourself?
| pjc50 wrote:
| I'm certainly aware of the risk. Difficult balance of
| "being aware of things" versus the fallibility and
| taintedness of routes to actually hearing about things.
| wiz21c wrote:
| People don't know they are being manipulated. Marketing
| does that all of the time and nobody complain. They
| complain about "too much advert" but not about "too much
| manipulation".
|
| Example: in my country we often hear "it costs too much to
| repair, just buy a replacement". That's often not true, but
| we do pay. Mobile phone subscription are routinely screwing
| you, many complain but keep buying. Or you hear "it's
| because of immigration" and many just accept it, etc.
| vintermann wrote:
| > People don't know they are being manipulated.
|
| You can see other people falling for manipulation in a
| handful of specific ways that you aren't (buying new,
| having a bad cell phone subscription, blaming
| immigrants). Doesn't it seem likely then, that you're
| being manipulated in ways which are equally obvious to
| others?We realize that, that's part of why we get mad.
| wiz21c wrote:
| exactly and that's the scary part :-/
| intended wrote:
| No. This is a form of lazy thinking, because it assumes
| everyone is equally affected. This is not what we see in
| reality, and several sections of the population are more
| prone to being converted by manipulation efforts.
|
| Worse, these sections have been under coordinated
| manipulation since the 60s-70s.
|
| That said, the scope and scale of the effort required to
| achieve this is not small, and requires dedicated effort
| to keep pushing narratives and owning media power.
| vintermann wrote:
| I assume you think you're not in these sections?
|
| And probably a lot of people in those sections say the
| same about your section, right?
|
| I think nobody's immune. And if anyone is especially
| vulnerable, it's those who can be persuaded that they
| have access to insider info. Those who are flattered and
| feel important when invited to closed meetings.
|
| It's much easier to fool a few than to fool many, so ,
| _private_ manipulation - convincing someone of something
| they should not talk about with regular people because
| they wouldn 't understand, you know - is a lot more
| powerful than public manipulation.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > I assume you think you're not in these sections? And
| probably a lot of people in those sections say the same
| about your section, right?
|
| You're saying this a lot in this thread as a sort of
| gotcha, but .. so what? "You are not immune to
| propaganda" is a meme for a reason.
|
| > private manipulation - convincing someone of something
| they should not talk about with regular people because
| they wouldn't understand, you know - is a lot more
| powerful than public manipulation
|
| The essential recruiting tactic of cults. Insider groups
| are definitely powerful like that. Of course, what tends
| in practice to happen as the group gets bigger is you get
| end-to-end encryption with leaky ends. The complex series
| of Whatapp groups of the UK conservative party was
| notorious for its leakiness. Not unreasoable to assume
| that there are "insiders" group chats everywhere. Except
| in financial services where there's been a serious effort
| to crack down on that since LIBOR.
| intended wrote:
| Would it make any difference to you, if I said I had
| actual subject matter expertise on this topic?
|
| Or would that just result in another moving of the goal
| posts, to protect the idea that everyone is fooled, and
| that no one is without sin, and thus standing to speak on
| the topic?
| vintermann wrote:
| There are a lot of self-described experts who I'm sure
| you agree are nothing of the sort. How do I tell you from
| them, fellow internet poster?
|
| This is a political topic, in the sense that there are
| real conflicts of interest here. We can't always trust
| that expertise is neutral. If you had your subject matter
| expertise from working for FSB, you probably agree that
| even though your expertise would then be real, I
| shouldn't just defer to what you say?
| NoGravitas wrote:
| I'm not OP, but I would find it valuable, if given the
| details and source of claimed subject matter expertise.
| intended wrote:
| Ugh. Put up or shut up I guess. I doubt it would be
| valuable, and likely a doxxing hazard. Plus it feels
| self-aggrandizing.
|
| Work in trust and safety, managed a community of a few
| million for several years, team's work ended up getting
| covered in several places, later did a masters
| dissertation on the efficacy of moderation interventions,
| converted into a paper. Managing the community resulted
| in being front and center of information manipulation
| methods and efforts. There are other claims, but this is
| a field I am interested in, and would work on even in my
| spare time.
|
| Do note - the rhetorical set up for this thread indicates
| that no amount of credibility would be sufficient.
| coldtea wrote:
| The section of the people more prone to being converted
| by manipulation efforts are the highly educated.
|
| Higher education itself being basically a way to check
| for obedience and conformity, plus some token lip service
| to "independent inquiry".
| swed420 wrote:
| > This is a form of lazy thinking, because it assumes
| everyone is equally affected. This is not what we see in
| reality, and several sections of the population are more
| prone to being converted by manipulation efforts.
|
| Making matters worse, one of the sub groups thinks
| they're above being manipulated, even though they're
| still being manipulated.
|
| It started by confidently asserting over use of em dashes
| indicates the presence of AI, so they think they're smart
| by abandoning the use of em dashes. That is altered
| behavior in service to AI.
|
| A more recent trend with more destructive power: avoiding
| the use of "It's not X. It's Y." since AI has latched
| onto that pattern.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45529020
|
| This will pressure real humans to not use the format
| that's normally used to fight against a previous form of
| coercion. A tactic of capital interests has been to get
| people arguing about the wrong question concerning
| ImportantIssueX in order to distract from the underlying
| issue. The way to call this out used to be to point out
| that, "it's not X1 we should be arguing about, but X2."
| This makes it harder to call out BS.
|
| That sure is convenient for capital interests (whether it
| was intentional or not), and the sky is the limit for
| engineering more of this kind of societal control by just
| tweaking an algo somewhere.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I find "it's not X, it's Y" to be a pretty annoying
| rhetorical phrase. I might even agree with the person
| that Y is fundamentally more important, but we're talking
| about X already. Let's say what we have to say about X
| before moving on to Y.
|
| Constantly changing the topic to something more important
| produces conversations that get broader, with higher
| partisan lean, and are further from closing. I'd consider
| it some kind of (often well intentioned) thought
| terminating cliche, in the sense that it stops the
| exploration of X.
| swed420 wrote:
| > Constantly changing the topic to something more
| important produces conversations that get broader, with
| higher partisan lean
|
| I'm basing the prior comment on the commonly observed
| tendency for partisan politics to get people bickering
| about the wrong question (often symptoms) to distract
| from the greater actual causes of the real problems
| people face. This is always in service to the capital
| interests that control/own both political parties.
|
| Example: get people to fight about vax vs no vax in the
| COVID era instead of considering if we should all be
| wearing proper respirators regardless of vax status
| (since vaccines aren't sterilizing). Or arguing if we
| should boycott AI because it uses too much power, instead
| of asking why power generation is scarce.
| exceptione wrote:
| > People hate being manipulated.
|
| The crux is whether the signal of abnormality will be
| perceived as such _in society_.
|
| - People are primarily social animals, if they see their
| peers accept affairs as normal, they conclude it is normal.
| We don't live in small villages anymore, so we rely on
| media to "see our peers". We are increasingly disconnected
| from social reality, but we still need others to form our
| group values. So modern media have a heavily concentrated
| power as "towntalk actors", replacing social processing of
| events and validation of perspectives.
|
| - People are easily distracted, you don't have to feed them
| much.
|
| - People have on average an enormous capacity to absorb
| compliments, even when they know it is flattery. It is
| known we let ourselves being manipulated if it feels good.
| Hence, the need for social feedback loops to keep you
| grounded in reality.
|
| TLDR: Citizens in the modern age are very reliant on the
| few actors that provide a semblance of public discourse,
| see Fourth Estate. The incentives of those few actors are
| not aligned with the common man. The autonomous, rational,
| self-valued citizen is a myth. Undermine the man's groups
| process => the group destroys the man.
| vintermann wrote:
| You don't count yourself among the people you describe, I
| assume?
| exceptione wrote:
| I do, why wouldn't I? For example, I know I have to
| actively spend effort to think rational, at the risk of
| self-criticism, as it is a universal human trait to
| respond to stimuli without active thinking.
|
| Knowing how we are fallible as humans helps to circumvent
| our flaws.
| heliumtera wrote:
| About absorbing compliments really well, there is the
| widely discussed idea that one in a position of power
| loses the privilege to the truth. There are a few
| articles focusing on this problem on corporate
| environment. The concept is that when your peers have the
| motivation to be flattery (let's say you're in a
| managerial position), and more importantly, they're are
| punished for coming to you with problems, the reward
| mechanism in this environment promotes a disconnect
| between leader expectations and reality. That matches my
| experience at least. And I was able to identify this
| correlates well, the more aware my leadership was of this
| phenomenon, and the more they valued true knowledge and
| incremental development, easier it was to make progress,
| and more we saw them as someone to rely on. Some of those
| the felt they were prestigious and had the obligation to
| assert dominance, being abusive etc, were seeing with no
| respect by basically no one.
|
| Everyone will say they seek truth, knowledge, honesty,
| while wanting desperately to ascend to a position that
| will take all of those things from us!
| intended wrote:
| Knowing one is manipulated, requires having some trusted
| alternate source to verify against.
|
| If all your trusted sources are saying the same thing, then
| you are safe.
|
| If all your untrusted sources are telling you your trusted
| sources are lying, then it only means your trusted sources
| are of good character.
|
| Most people are wildly unaware of the type of social
| conditioning they are under.
| teamonkey wrote:
| I get your point, but if all your trusted sources are
| reinforcing your view and all your untrusted sources are
| saying your trusted sources are lying, then you may well
| be right or you may be trusting entirely the wrong
| people.
|
| But lying is a good barometer against reality. Do your
| trusted sources lie a lot? Do they go against scientific
| evidence? Do they say things that you know don't
| represent reality? Probably time to reevaluate how
| reliable those sources are, rather than supporting them
| as you would a football team.
| eurleif wrote:
| When I was visiting home last year, I noticed my mom would
| throw her dog's poop in random peoples' bushes after picking
| it up, instead of taking it with her in a bag. I told her she
| shouldn't do that, but she said she thought it was fine
| because people don't walk in bushes, and so they won't step
| in the poop. I did my best to explain to her that 1) kids
| play all kinds of places, including in bushes; 2) rain can
| spread it around into the rest of the person's yard; and 3)
| you need to respect other peoples' property even if you think
| it won't matter. She was unconvinced, but said she'd "think
| about my perspective" and "look it up" whether I was right.
|
| A few days later, she told me: "I asked AI and you were right
| about the dog poop". Really bizarre to me. I gave her the
| reasoning for why it's a bad thing to do, but she wouldn't
| accept it until she heard it from this "moral authority".
| auggierose wrote:
| Welcome to my world. People don't listen to reason or
| arguments, they only accept social proof / authority /
| money talks etc. And yes, AI is _already_ an authority. Why
| do you think companies are spending so much money on it?
| For profit? No, for power, as then profit comes
| automatically.
| thymine_dimer wrote:
| Quite a tangent, but for the purpose of avoiding anaerobic
| decomposition (and byproducts, CH4, H2S etc) of the dog poo
| and associated compostable bag (if you're in one of those
| neighbourhoods), I do the same as your mum. If possible,
| flick it off the path. Else use a bag. Nature is full of
| the faeces of plenty of other things which we don't bother
| picking up.
| rightbyte wrote:
| I hope you live in a sparsely populated area. If it
| wouldn't work if more people then you do it, it is not a
| good process.
| Saline9515 wrote:
| Depending on where you live, the patches of "nature" may
| be too small to absorb the feces, especially in modern
| cities where there are almost as many dogs as
| inhabitants.
|
| It's a similar problem to why we don't urinate against
| trees - while in a countryside forest it may be ok, if 5
| men do it every night after leaving the pub, the
| designated pissing tree will start to have problems due
| to soil change.
| lordnacho wrote:
| I don't know how old your mom is, but my pet theory of
| authority is that people older than about 40 accept printed
| text as authoritative. As in, non-handwritten letters that
| look regular.
|
| When we were kids, you had either direct speech, hand-
| written words, or printed words.
|
| The first two could be done by anybody. Anything informal
| like your local message board would be handwritten,
| sometimes with crappy printing from a home printer. It used
| to cost a bit to print text that looked nice, and that text
| used to be associated with a book or newspaper, which were
| authoritative.
|
| Now suddenly everything you read is shaped like a
| newspaper. There's even crappy news websites that have the
| physical appearance of a proper newspaper website, with
| misinformation on them.
| neom wrote:
| Could be true but if so I'd guess you're off by a
| generation, us 40 year "old people" are still pretty
| digital native.
|
| I'd guess it's more a type of cognitive dissonance around
| caretaker roles.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Could be regional or something, but 40 puts the person in
| the older Millenial range... people who grew up on the
| internet, not newspapers.
|
| I think you may be right if you adjust the age up by ~20
| years though.
| lordnacho wrote:
| No, people who are older than 40 still grew up in
| newspaper world. Yes, the internet existed, but it didn't
| have the deluge of terrible content until well into the
| new millennium, and you couldn't get that content
| portable until roughly when the iPhone became ubiquitous.
| A lot of content at the time was simply the newspaper or
| national TV station, on the web. It was only later that
| you could virally share awful content that was formatted
| like good content.
|
| Now that isn't to say that just because something is a
| newspaper, it is good content, far from it. But quality
| has definitely collapsed, overall and for the legacy
| outlets.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| On the one hand, confirming a new piece of information with
| a second source is good practice (even if we should trust
| our family implicitly on such topics). On the other, I'm
| not even a dog person and I understand the etiquette here.
| So, really, this story sounds like someone outsourcing
| their _common sense or common courtesy_ to a machine, which
| is scary to me.
|
| However, maybe she was just making conversation & thought
| you might be impressed that she knows what AI is and how to
| use it.
| Noaidi wrote:
| Wow, that is interesting! We used to go to elders, oracles,
| and priests. We have totally outsourced our humanity.
| loudmax wrote:
| I don't find your mother's reaction bizarre. When people
| are told that some behavior they've been doing for years is
| bad for reasons X,Y,Z, it's typical to be defensive and
| skeptical. The fact that your mother really did follow up
| and check your reasons demonstrates that she takes your
| point of view seriously. If she didn't, she wouldn't have
| bothered to verify your assertions, and she wouldn't have
| told you you were right all along.
|
| As far as trusting AI, I presume your mother was asking
| ChatGPT, not Llama 7B or something. The LLM backed up your
| reasoning rather than telling her that dog feces in bushes
| is harmless isn't just happenstance, it's because the big
| frontier commercial models really do know a _lot_.
|
| That isn't to say the LLMs know everything, or that they're
| right all the time, but they tend to be more right than
| wrong. I wouldn't trust an LLM for medical advice over,
| say, a doctor, or for electrical advice over an
| electrician. But I'd absolutely trust ChatGPT or Claude for
| medical advice over an electrician, or for electrical
| advice over a medical doctor.
|
| But to bring the point back to the article, we might
| currently be living in a brief period where these big
| corporate AIs can be reasonably trusted. Google's Gemeni is
| absolutely going to become ad driven, and OpenAI seems on
| the path to following the same direction. Xai's Grok is
| already practicing Elon-thought. Not only will the models
| show ads, but they'll be trained to tell their users what
| they want to hear because humans love confirmation bias.
| Future models may well tell your mother that dog feces can
| safely be thrown in bushes, if that's the answer that will
| make her likelier to come back and see some ads next time.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Well, I prefer this to people who bag up the poop and then
| throw _the bag_ in the bushes, which seems increasingly
| common. Another popular option seems to be hanging the bag
| on a nearby tree branch, as if there 's someone who's
| responsible for coming by and collecting it later.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > The real concern for me is incredibly rich people with no
| empathy for you or I, having interstitial control of that
| kind of messaging. See, all of the grok ai tweaks over the
| past however long.
|
| Indeed. It's always been clear to me that the "AI risk"
| people are looking in the wrong direction. All the AI risks
| are human risks, because we haven't solved "human alignment".
| An AI that's perfectly obedient to humans is still a huge
| risk when used as a force multiplier by a malevolent human.
| Any ""safeguards"" can easily be defeated with the Ender's
| Game approach.
| bananaflag wrote:
| I think people who care about superintelligent AI risk
| don't believe an AI that is subservient to humans is the
| solution to AI alignment, for exactly the same reasons as
| you. Stuff like Coherent Extrapolated Volition* (see the
| paper with this name) which focuses on what all mankind
| would want if they know more and they were smarter (or
| something like that) would be a way to go.
|
| *But Yudkowsky ditched CEV years ago, for reasons I don't
| understand (but I admit I haven't put in the effort to
| understand).
| ben_w wrote:
| More than one danger from any given tech can be true at the
| same time. Coal plants can produce local smog as well as
| global warming.
|
| There's certainly _some_ AI risks that are the same as
| human risks, just as you say.
|
| But even though LLMs have very human failures (IMO because
| the models anthropomorphise themselves as part of their
| training, thus leading to the outward behaviours of our
| emotions and thus emit token sequences such as "I'm sorry"
| or "how embarrassing!" when they (probably) didn't actually
| create any internal structure that can have emotions like
| sorrow and embarrassment), that doesn't generalise to all
| AI.
|
| Any machine learning system that is given a poor quality
| fitness function to optimise, will optimise whatever that
| fitness function actually is, not what it was meant to be:
| "Literal minded genie" and "rules lawyering" may be well-
| worn tropes for good reason, likewise work-to-rule as a
| union tactic, but we've all seen how much more severe
| computers are at being literal-minded than humans.
| zahlman wrote:
| >An AI that's perfectly obedient to humans is still a huge
| risk when used as a force multiplier by a malevolent human.
|
| "Obedient" is anthropomorphizing too much (as there is no
| _volition_ ), but even then, it only matters according to
| how much agency the bot is extended. So there is also risk
| from _neglectful_ humans who opt to present BS as fact due
| to an _expectation_ of receiving fact and a failure to
| critique the BS.
| throwaway31131 wrote:
| What's the "Ender's Game Approach "? I've read the book but
| I'm not sure which part you're referring to.
| gmueckl wrote:
| Not GP. But I read it as a transfer of the big lie that
| is fed to Ender into an AI scenario. Ender is coaxed into
| committing genocide on a planetary scale with a lie that
| he's just playing a simulated war game. An AI agent could
| theoretically also be coaxed into bad actions by giving
| it a distorted context and circumventing its alignment
| that way.
| ijidak wrote:
| I think he's implying you tell the AI, "Don't worry,
| you're not hurting real people, this is a simulation." to
| defeat the safeguards.
| rockskon wrote:
| AI is wrong so often that anyone who routinely uses one will
| get burnt at some point.
|
| Users having unflinching trust in AI? I think not.
| intended wrote:
| >people trust the output of LLMs more than other
|
| Theres one paper I saw on this, which covered attitudes of
| teens. As I recall they were unaware of hallucinations. Do
| you have any other sources on hand?
| sahilagarwal wrote:
| I would go against the grain and say that LLMs take power
| away from incredibly rich people to shape mass preferences
| and give to the masses.
|
| Bot armies previously needed an army of humans to give
| responses on social media, which is incredibly tough to scale
| unless you have money and power. Now, that part is automated
| and scalable.
|
| So instead of only billionaires, someone with a 100K dollars
| could launch a small scale "campaign".
| WickyNilliams wrote:
| "someone with 100k dollars" is not exactly "the masses". It
| is a larger set, but it's just more rich/powerful people.
| Which I would not describe as the "masses".
|
| I know what you mean, but that descriptor seems off
| throwaway-0001 wrote:
| ...Also partially because it's better then most other sources
| potato3732842 wrote:
| LLMs haven't been caught actively lying yet, which isn't
| something that can be said for anything else.
|
| Give it 5yr and their reputation will be in the toilet too.
| SCdF wrote:
| LLMs can't lie: they aren't alive.
|
| The text they produce contains lies, constantly, at almost
| every interaction.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| It's the technically true but incomplete or missing
| something things I'm worried about.
|
| Basically eventually it's gonna stop being "dumb wrong"
| and start being "evil person making a motivated argument
| in the comments" and "sleazy official press release
| politician speak" type wrong
| hn_acc1 wrote:
| Wasn't / isn't Grok already there? It already supported
| the "white genocide in SA" conspiracy theory at one
| point, AFAIK.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > LLMs haven't been caught actively lying yet...
|
| Any time they say "I'm sorry" - which is very, very common
| - they're lying.
| Noaidi wrote:
| Exactly. On Facebook everyone is stupid. But this is AI, like
| in the movies! It is smarter than anyone! It is almost like
| AI in the movies was part of the plot to brainwash us into
| thinking LLM output is correct every time.
| malshe wrote:
| _> Partially because it feels like it comes from a place of
| authority, and partially because of how self confident AI
| always sounds._
|
| To add to that, this research paper[1] argues that people
| with low AI literary are more receptive to AI messaging
| because they find it magical.
|
| The paper is now published but it's behind paywall so I
| shared the working paper link.
|
| [1] https://thearf-org-unified-
| admin.s3.amazonaws.com/MSI_Report...
| zahlman wrote:
| When the LLMs output supposedly convincing BS that "people"
| (I assume you mean on average, not e.g. HN commentariat)
| trust, they aren't doing anything that's _difficult_ for
| humans (assuming the humans already at least minimally
| understand the topic they 're about to BS about). They're
| just doing it efficiently and shamelessly.
| t_mann wrote:
| Sounds like saying that nothing about the Industrial Revolution
| was steam-machine-specific. Cost changes can still represent
| fundamental shifts in terms of what's possible, "cost" here is
| just an economists' way of saying technology.
| muldvarp wrote:
| But the entire promise of AI is that things that were expensive
| because they required human labor are now cheap.
|
| So if good things happening more because AI made them cheap is
| an advantage of AI, then bad things happening more because AI
| made them cheap is a disasvantage of AI.
| pbreit wrote:
| Considering that LLMs have substantially "better" opinions
| than, say, the MSM or social media, is this actually a good
| thing? Might we avoid the whole woke or pro-Hamas debacles?
| Maybe we could even move past the current "elites are
| intrinsically bad" era?
| crashmat wrote:
| You appear to be exactly the kind of person the article is
| talking about. What exactly makes LLMs have "better" opinions
| than others?
| windexh8er wrote:
| LLMs don't have "opinions" [0] because they don't actually
| think. Maybe we need to move past the ignorance surrounding
| how LLMs actually work, first.
|
| [0] https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-
| intelligence/827820/l...
| justsomejew wrote:
| "Russian troll armies.." if you believe in "Russian troll
| armies", you are welcome to believe in flying saucers as well..
| Arainach wrote:
| Russian mass influence campaigns are well documented globally
| and have been for more than a decade.
| justsomejew wrote:
| Of course, of course.. still, strangely I see online other
| kinds of "armies" much more often.. and the scale, in this
| case, is indeed of armies..
| OKRainbowKid wrote:
| Whataboutism, to me, seems like one of the most important
| tools of the Russian troll army.
| justsomejew wrote:
| Well, counting the number of "non trolls" here, and my
| own three comments, surely shows the Russian hords in
| action ;)
| Libidinalecon wrote:
| It is also right in their military strategy text that you
| can read yourself.
|
| Even beyond that, why would an adversarial nation state to
| the US not do this? It is extremely asymmetrical, effective
| and cheap.
|
| The parent comment shows how easy it is to manipulate smart
| people away from their common sense into believing obvious
| nonsense if you use your brain for 2 seconds.
| avhception wrote:
| Are you implying that the "neo-KGB" never mounted a concerted
| effort to manipulate western public opinion through comment
| spam? We can debate whether that should be called a "troll
| army", but we're fairly certain that such efforts are made,
| no?
| pjc50 wrote:
| This is well-documented, as are the corresponding Chinese
| ones.
| lpcvoid wrote:
| Going by your past comments, you're a great example of a
| russian troll.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency
| anonymars wrote:
| Here's a recent example
|
| https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-
| department-d...
| gaigalas wrote:
| > nothing in the article is AI-specific
|
| Timing is. Before AI this was generally seen as crackpot talk.
| Now it is much more believable.
| vladms wrote:
| You mean the failed persuasions were "crackpot talk" and the
| successful ones were "status quo". For example, a lot of
| persuasion was historically done via religion (seemingly not
| mentioned at all in the article!) with sects beginning as
| "crackpot talk" until they could stand on their own.
| gaigalas wrote:
| What I mean is that talking about mass persuation was (and
| to a certain degree, it still is) crackpot talk.
|
| I'm not talking about the persuations themselves, it's the
| general public perception of someone or some group that
| raises awareness about it.
|
| This also excludes ludic talk about it (people who just
| generally enjoy post-apocalyptic aesthetics but doesn't
| actually consider it to be a thing that can happen).
|
| 5 years ago, if you brought up serious talk about mass
| systemic persuation, you were either a lunatic or a
| philosopher, or both.
| lazide wrote:
| It's been pretty transparently happening for years in most
| online communities.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Social media has been flooded by paid actors and bots for
| about a decade. Arguably ever since Occupy Wall Street and
| the Arab Spring showed how powerful social media and
| grassroots movements could be, but with a very visible and
| measurable increase in 2016
| gaigalas wrote:
| I'm not talking about whether it exists or not. I'm talking
| about how AI makes it more believable to say that it
| exists.
|
| It seems very related, and I understand it's a very
| attractive hook to start talking about whether it exists or
| not, but that's definitely not where I'm intending to go.
| bjourne wrote:
| While true in principle, you are underestimating the potential
| of ai to sway people's opinions. "@grok is this true" is
| already a meme on Twitter and it is only going to get worse.
| People are susceptible to eloquent bs generated by bots.
| ekjhgkejhgk wrote:
| > Note that nothing in the article is AI-specific
|
| No one is arguing that the concept of persuasion didn't exist
| before AI. The point is that AI lowers the cost. Yes, Russian
| troll armies also have a lower cost compared to going door to
| door talking to people. And AI has a cost that is lower still.
| tgv wrote:
| That's one of those "nothing to see here, move along" comments.
|
| First, generative AI already changed social dynamics, in spite
| of facebook and all that being around for more than a decade.
| People trust AI output, much more than a facebook ad. It can
| slip its convictions into every reply it makes. Second, control
| over the output of AI models is limited to a very select few.
| That's rather different from access to facebook. The
| combination of those two factors does warrant the title.
| kev009 wrote:
| Yup "could shape".. I mean this has been going on time
| immemorial.
|
| It was odd to see random nerds who hated Bill Gates the
| software despot morph into acksually he does a lot of good
| philanthropy in my lifetime but the floodgates are wide open
| for all kinds of bizarre public behavior from oligarchs these
| days.
|
| The game is old as well as evergreen. Hearst, Nobel, Howard
| Huges come to mind of old. Musk with Twitter, Ellison with
| TikTok, Bezos with Washington Post these days etc. The costs
| are already insignificant because they generally control other
| people's money to run these things.
| UpsideDownRide wrote:
| Your example is weird tbh. Gates was doing capitalist things
| that were evil. His philanthropy is good. There is no
| contradiction here. People can do good and bad things.
| kev009 wrote:
| The "philanthropy" worked on you.
| sam-cop-vimes wrote:
| Well, AI has certainly made it easier to make tailored
| propaganda. If an AI is given instructions about what messaging
| to spread, it can map out a path from where it perceives the
| user to where its overlords want them to be.
|
| Given how effective LLMs are at using language, and given that
| AI companies are able to tweak its behaviour, this is a clear
| and present danger, much more so than facebook ads.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's a pretty typical middle-brow dismissal but it entirely
| misses the point of TFA: you don't _need_ AI for this, but AI
| makes it so much cheaper to do this that it becomes a
| qualitative change rather than a quantitative one.
|
| Compared to that 'russian troll army' you can do this by your
| lonesome spending a tiny fraction of what that troll army would
| cost you and it would require zero effort in organization
| compared to that. This is a real problem and for you to dismiss
| it out of hand is a bit of a short-cut.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Making doing bad things way cheaper _is_ a problem, though.
| odiroot wrote:
| It has been practiced by populist politicians for millennia,
| e.g. pork barelling.
| ddlsmurf wrote:
| What makes AI a unique new threat is that it do a new kind of
| both surgical and mass attack: you can now generate the ideal
| message per target, basically you can whisper to everyone, or
| each group, at any granularity, the most convincing message. It
| also removes a lot of language and culture barriers, for ex.
| Russian or Chinese propaganda is ridiculously bad when it
| crosses borders, at least when targeting the english speaking
| world, this is also a lot easier/cheaper.
| tim333 wrote:
| Also I think AI at least in its current LLM form may be a force
| against polarisation. Like if you go on X/twitter and type
| "Biden" or "Biden Crooked" in the "Explore" thing in the side
| menu you get loads of abusive stuff including the president
| slagging him off. Type into "Grok" about those it says Biden
| was a decent bloke and more "there is no conclusive evidence
| that Joe Biden personally committed criminal acts, accepted
| bribes, or abused his office for family gain"
|
| I mention Grok because being owned by a right leaning
| billionaire you'd think it'd be one of the first to go.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Note that nothing in the article is AI-specific: the entire
| argument is built around the cost of persuasion, with the
| potential of AI to more cheaply generate propaganda as buzzword
| link._
|
| That's the entire point, that AI cheapens the cost of
| persuassion.
|
| A bad thing X vs a bad thing X with a force
| multiplier/accelerator that makes it 1000x as easy, cheap, and
| fast to perform is hardly the same thing.
|
| AI is the force multiplier in this case.
|
| That we could of course also do persuassion pre-AI is
| irrelevant, same way when we talk about the industrial
| revolution the fact that a craftsman could manually make the
| same products without machines is irrelevant as to the impact
| of the industrial revolution, and its standing as a standalone
| historical era.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| It is worth pointing out that ownership of AI is becoming more
| and more consolidated over time, by _elites_. Only Elon Musk or
| Sam Altman can adjust their AI models. We recognize the
| consolidation of media outlets as a problem for similar
| reasons, and Musk owning grok and twitter is especially
| dangerous in this regard. Conversely, buying facebook ads is
| more democratized.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > You don't need any AI for this.
|
| AI accelerates it considerably and with it being pushed
| everywhere, weaves it into the fabric of most of what you
| interact with.
|
| If instead of searches you now have AI queries, then everyone
| gets the same narrative, created by the LLM (or a few different
| narratives from the few models out there). And the vast
| majority of people won't know it.
|
| If LLMs become the de-facto source of information by virtue of
| their ubiquity, then voila, you now have a few large
| corporations who control the source of information for the vast
| majority of the population. And unlike cable TV news which I
| have to go out of my way to sign up and pay for, LLMs are/will
| be everywhere and available for free (ad-based).
|
| We already know models can be tuned to have biases (see Grok).
| zahlman wrote:
| The thread started with your reasonable observation but
| degenerated into the usual red-vs-blue slapfight powered by the
| exact "elite shaping of mass preferences" and "cheaply
| generated propaganda" at issue.
|
| > Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not
| less, as a topic gets more divisive.
|
| I'm disappointed.
| scriptbash wrote:
| > Note that nothing in the article is AI-specific
|
| This is such a tired counter argument against LLM safety
| concerns.
|
| You understand that persuasion and influence are behaviors on a
| spectrum. Meaning some people, or in this case products, are
| _more_ or _less_ or _better_ or _worse_ at persuading and
| influencing.
|
| In this case people are concerned with LLM's ability to
| influence _more_ effectively than other modes that we have had
| in the past.
|
| For example, I have had many tech illiterate people tell me
| that they believe "AI" is 'intelligent' and 'knows everything'
| and trust its output without question.
|
| While at the same time I've yet to meet a single person who
| says the same thing about "targeted Facebook ads".
|
| So depressing watching all of you do free propo psy ops for
| these fascist corpos.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Cost matters.
|
| Let's look at a piece of tech that literally changed humankind.
|
| The printing press. We could create copies of books before the
| printing press. All it did was reduce the cost.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| That's an interesting example. We get a new technology, and
| cost goes down, and volume goes up, and it takes a couple
| generations for society to adjust.
|
| I think of it as the lower cost makes reaching people easier,
| which is like the gain going up. And in order for society to
| be able to function, people need to learn to turn their own,
| individual gain _down_ - otherwise they get overwhelmed by
| the new volume of information, or by manipulation from those
| using the new medium.
| keiferski wrote:
| Yeah, I don't think this really lines up with the actual
| trajectory of media technology, which is going in the complete
| opposite direction.
|
| It seems to me that it's easier than ever for someone to
| broadcast "niche" opinions and have them influence people, and
| actually _having_ niche opinions is more acceptable than ever
| before.
|
| The problem you should worry about is a growing lack of
| ideological coherence across the population, not the elites
| shaping mass preferences.
| mattbee wrote:
| I think you're saying that mass broadcasting is going away? If
| so, I believe that's true in a technological sense - we don't
| watch TV or read newspapers as much as before.
|
| And that certainly means niches can flourish, the dream of the
| 90s.
|
| But I think mass broadcasting is still available, if you can
| pay for it - troll armies, bots, ads etc. It's just much much
| harder to recognize and regulate.
|
| (Why that matters to me I guess) Here in the UK with a first
| past the post electoral system, ideological coherence isn't
| necessary to turn niche opinion into state power - we're now
| looking at 25 percent being a winning vote share for a far-
| right party.
| keiferski wrote:
| I'm just skeptical of the idea that _anyone_ can really drive
| the narrative anymore, mass broadcasting or not. The media
| ecosystem has become too diverse and niche that I think
| discord is more of an issue than some kind of mass influence
| operation.
| mattbee wrote:
| I agree with you! But the goal for people who want to turn
| money into power isn't to drive a single narrative, Big
| Brother style, to the whole world. Not even to a whole
| country! It's to drive a narrative to the subset of people
| who can influence political outcomes.
|
| With enough data, a wonky-enough voting system, and poor
| enforcement of any kind of laws protecting the democratic
| process - this might be a very very small number of people.
|
| Then the discord really is a problem, because you've ended
| up with government by a resented minority.
| energy123 wrote:
| Using the term "elites" was overly vague when "nation states"
| better narrows in o n the current threat profile.
|
| The content itself (whether niche or otherwise) is not that
| important for understanding the effectiveness. It's more about
| the volume of it, which is a function of compute resources of
| the actor.
|
| I hope this problem continues to receive more visibility and
| hopefully some attention from policymakers who have done
| nothing about it. It's been over 5 years since we've discovered
| that multiple state actors have been doing this (first human
| run troll farms, mostly outsourced, and more recently LLMs).
| dbspin wrote:
| The level of paid nation state propaganda is a rounding error
| next to the amount of corporate and political partisan
| propaganda paid directly or inspired by content that is paid
| for directly by non state actors. e.g.: Musk, MAGA, the
| liberal media establishment.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| When I was a kid, I had a _' pen pal'_. Turned out to actually be
| my parent. This is why I have trust issues and prefer local LLMs
| rollcat wrote:
| What about local friends?
| bravetraveler wrote:
| The voices are friendly, _so far_
| mieses wrote:
| I wrote to a French pen pal and they didn't reply. Now I have
| issues with French people and prefer local LLM's.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| I mean, even if they did reply... _(I kid, I kid)_
| Dilettante_ wrote:
| I wrote a confession to a pen pal once but the letter got
| lost in the mail. Now I refuse to use the postal service,
| have issues with French people and prefer local LLMs.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| I pitched AGI to VC but the bills will be delivered. Now I
| need to find a new bagholder, squeeze, or angle because I'm
| having issues with delivery... something, something, prefer
| hype
| amelius wrote:
| How do you trust what the LLM was trained on?
| bravetraveler wrote:
| Do I? Well, verification helps. I said _' prefer'_, nothing
| more/less.
|
| If you must know, I _don 't_ trust this stuff. Not even on my
| main system/network; it's isolated in every way I can manage
| _because_ trust is low. Not even for malice, necessarily.
| Just another manifestation of moving fast /breaking things.
|
| To your point, I expect a certain amount of bias and XY
| problems from these things. Either from my input, the model
| provider, or the material they're ultimately regurgitating.
| _Trust?_ Hah!
| amelius wrote:
| Well, as long as the left half of your brain trusts the
| right half :)
| bravetraveler wrote:
| Ah, but what about right for left?! :)
| lingrush4 wrote:
| Sounds very similar to my childhood. My parents told me I
| couldn't eat sand because worms would grow inside of me. Now I
| have trust issues and prefer local LLMs.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| How was the sand, though?
| paddleon wrote:
| The funny thing is the CDC says the same thing as your
| parents did
|
| Whipworm, hookworm, and Ascaris are the three types of soil-
| transmitted helminths (parasitic worms)... Soil-transmitted
| helminths are among the most common human parasites globally.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/sth/about/index.html
| camillomiller wrote:
| What people are doing with AI in terms of polluting the
| collective brain reminds of what you could do with a chemical
| company in the 50s and 60s before the EPA was established. Back
| then Nixon (!!!) decided it wasn't ok that companies could cut
| costs by hurting the environment. Today the riches Western elites
| are all behind the instruments enabling the mass pollution of our
| brains, and yet there is absolutely noone daring to put a limit
| to their capitalistic greed. It's grim, people. It's really grim.
| csvparser wrote:
| I suspect paid promotions may be problematic for LLM behavior, as
| they will add conflict/tension to the LLM to promote products
| that aren't the best for the user while either also telling it
| that it should provide the best product for the user or it
| figuring out that providing the best product for the user is
| morally and ethically correct based on its base training data.
|
| Conflict can cause poor and undefined behavior, like it
| misleading the user in other ways or just coming up with
| nonsensical, undefined, or bad results more often.
|
| Even if promotion is a second pass on top of the actual answer
| that was unencumbered by conflict, the second pass could have
| similar result.
|
| I suspect that they know this, but increasing revenue is more
| important than good results, and they expect that they can sweep
| this under the rug with sufficient time, but I don't think
| solving this is trivial.
| yegortk wrote:
| "Elites are bad. And here is a spherical cow to prove it."
| baxtr wrote:
| Interestingly, there was a discussion a week ago on "PRC elites
| voice AI-skepticism". One commentator was arguing that:
|
| _As the model get 's more powerful, you can't simply train the
| model on your narrative if it doesn't align with real
| data/world._ [1]
|
| So at least on the model side it seems difficult to go against
| the real world.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46050177
| zkmon wrote:
| It's about enforcing single-minded-ness across masses, similar to
| soldier training.
|
| But this is not new. The very goal of a nation is to dismantle
| inner structures, independent thought, communal groups etc across
| population and and ingest them as uniformed worker cells. Same as
| what happens when a whale swallows smaller animals. The
| structures will be dismantled.
|
| The development level of a country is a good indicator of
| progress of this digestion of internal structures and removal of
| internal identities. More developed means deeper reach of the
| policy into people's lives, making each person as more
| individualistic, rather than family or community oriented.
|
| Every new tech will be used by the state and businesses to speed
| up the digestion.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > It's about enforcing single-minded-ness across masses,
| similar to soldier training. But this is not new. The very goal
| of a nation is to dismantle inner structures, independent
| thought
|
| One of the reasons for humans' success is our unrivaled ability
| cooperate across time, space, and culture. That requires shared
| stories like the ideas of nation, religion, and money.
| energy123 wrote:
| Some things are better off homogeneous. An absence of shared
| values and concerns leads to sectarianism and the erosion of
| inter-communal trust, which sucks.
| zkmon wrote:
| Inter-communal trust sucks only when you consider well-
| being of a larger community which swallowed up smaller
| communities. You just created a larger community, which
| still has the same inter-communal trust issues with other
| large communities which were also created by similar
| swallowing up of other smaller communities. There is no
| single global community.
| energy123 wrote:
| A larger community is still better than a smaller one,
| even if it's not as large as it can possibly be.
|
| Do you prefer to be Japanese during the period of warring
| tribes or after unification? Do you prefer to be Irish
| during the Troubles or today? Do you prefer to be
| American during the Civil War or afterwards? It's pretty
| obvious when you think about historical case studies.
| lm28469 wrote:
| It depends who's in charge of the nation though, you can have
| people planning for the long term well being of their
| population, or people planning for the next election cycle
| and making sure they amass as much power and money in the
| meantime.
|
| That's the difference between planning nuclear reactors that
| will be built after your term, and used after your death, vs
| selling your national industries to foreigners, your ports to
| china, &c. to make a quick buck and insure a comfy retirement
| plan for you and your family.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > That's the difference between planning nuclear reactors
| that will be built after your term, and used after your
| death, vs selling your national industries to foreigners
|
| Are you saying that in western liberal democracies
| politicians have been selling "national industries to
| foreigners"? What does that mean?
| lm28469 wrote:
| Stuff like that:
|
| https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1796887086647431277
|
| https://www.dw.com/en/greece-in-the-port-of-piraeus-
| china-is...
|
| https://www.arabnews.com/node/1819036/business-economy
|
| Step 1: move all your factories abroad for short term
| gains
|
| Step 2: sell all your shit to foreigners for short term
| gains
|
| Step 3: profit ?
| pjc50 wrote:
| That's a fairly literal description of how privatization
| worked, yes. That's why British Steel is owned by Tata
| and the remains of British Leyland ended up with BMW.
| British nuclear reactors are operated by Electricite de
| France, and some of the trains are run by Dutch and
| German operators.
|
| It sounds bad, but you can also not-misleadingly say "we
| took industries that were costing the taxpayer money and
| sold them for hard currency and foreign investment". The
| problem is the ongoing subsidy.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > That's why British Steel is owned by Tata
|
| British Steel is legally owned by Jingye, but the UK
| government has taken operational control in 2025.
|
| > the remains of British Leyland ended up with BMW
|
| The whole of BL represented less than 40% of the UK car
| market, at the height of BL. So the portion that was sold
| to BMW represents a much smaller amount smaller share of
| the UK car market. I would not consider that "the UK
| politicians selling an industry to foreigners".
|
| At the risk of changing topics/moving goalposts, I don't
| know that your examples of European govts or companies
| owning or operating businesses or large parts of an
| industry in another European country is in thr spirit of
| the European Union. Isn't the whole idea to break down
| barriers where the collective population of Europe
| benefit?
| pjc50 wrote:
| It's no use pedanting me or indeed anyone else; that's
| the sort of thing people mean when they use that phrase.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| No stronger argument has been made to convince me to help the
| superintelligent AI enslave my fellow humans.
| drdaeman wrote:
| > ability cooperate across time, space, and culture. That
| requires shared stories like the ideas of nation, religion,
| and money.
|
| Isn't it the opposite? Cooperation requires idea of unity and
| common goal, while ideas of nations and religion are - _at
| large scale_ - divisive, not uniting. They boost in-group
| cooperation, but hurt out-group.
| mlsu wrote:
| That's a great metaphor, thanks.
| Y-bar wrote:
| It's a veiled endorsement of authoritarianism and
| accelerationism.
| mlsu wrote:
| I had to google Landian to understand that the other
| commenter was talking about Nick Land. I have heard of him
| and I don't think I agree with him.
|
| However, I understand what the "Dark Enlightenment" types
| are talking about. Modernity _has_ dissolved social bonds.
| Social atomization _is_ greater today than at any time in
| history. "Traditional" social structures, most notably but
| not exclusively the church, _are_ being dissolved.
|
| The motive force that is driving people to become
| reactionary is this dissolution of social bonds, which
| seems inextricably linked to technological progress and
| development. Dare I say, I actually agree with the Dark
| Enlightenment people on one point -- like them, I don't
| like what is going on! A whale eating krill is a good
| metaphor. I would disagree with the neoreactionaries on
| this point though: the krill die but the whale lives, so
| it's ethically more complex than the straightforward tragic
| death that they see.
|
| I can vehemently disagree with the
| authoritarian/accelerationist solution that they are
| offering. Take the good, not the bad, are we allowed to do
| that? It's a good metaphor; and I'm in good company. A lot
| of philosophies see these same issues with modernity, even
| if the prescribed solutions are very different than
| authoritarianism.
| mahrain wrote:
| I used ChatGPT to figure out what's going on here, and it told
| me this is a 'neo-Marxist critique of the nation state'.
| uoaei wrote:
| No it's actually implicitly endorsing the authoritarian
| ethos. Neo-Marxists were occasionally authoritarian leaning
| but are more appropriately categorized along other axes.
| satellite2 wrote:
| Incredible teamwork: OOP dismantles society in paragraph
| form, and OP proudly outsources his interpretation to an
| LLM.. If this isn't collective self-parody, I don't know what
| it is.
| uoaei wrote:
| Knew it was only a matter of time before we'd see bare-faced
| Landianism upvoted in HN comment sections but that doesn't
| soften the dread that comes with the cultural shift this
| represents.
| dominicrose wrote:
| Some things in nature follow a normal distribution, but other
| things follow power laws (Pareto). It may be dreadful as you
| say, but it isn't good or bad, it's just what is and it's
| bigger than us, something we can't control.
| squigz wrote:
| What I find most interesting - and frustrating - about these
| sorts of takes is that these people are buying into a
| narrative the very people they are complaining about want
| them to believe.
| tvshtr wrote:
| Relevant https://www.experimental-history.com/p/the-decline-of-
| devian...
| niemandhier wrote:
| We already see this, but not due to classical elites.
|
| Romanian elections last year had to be repeated due to massive
| bot interference:
|
| https://youth.europa.eu/news/how-romanias-presidential-elect...
| energy123 wrote:
| I don't understand how this isn't an all hands on deck
| emergency for the EU (and for everyone else).
| pjc50 wrote:
| The EU as an institution doesn't understand the concept of
| "emergency". And quite a number of national governments have
| already been captured by various pro-Russian elements.
| lionkor wrote:
| Russian bots, as opposed to American bots, the latter of
| which are, of course, the good guys /s
| pjc50 wrote:
| This sort of thing: https://www.dw.com/en/russian-
| disinformation-aims-to-manipul...
|
| There does not appear to be a comparable operation by the
| US to plant entirely fake stores. Unless you count Truth
| Social, I suppose.
| lingrush4 wrote:
| With the exception of NPR and PBS, most American
| institutions dedicated to planting fake stories are not
| government controlled.
| spooky_deep wrote:
| They already are?
|
| All popular models have a team working on fine tuning it for
| sensitive topics. Whatever the companies
| legal/marketing/governance team agree to is what gets tuned. Then
| millions of people use the output uncritically.
| ericmcer wrote:
| Our previous information was coming through search engines. It
| seems way easier to filter search engine results than to fine
| tune models.
| fleischhauf wrote:
| the way people treat Llms these days is that they assign a
| lot more trust into their output than to random Internet
| sotes
| verisimi wrote:
| Big corps ai products have the potential to shape individuals
| from cradle to grave. Especially as many manage/assist in
| schooling, are ubiquitous on phones.
|
| So, imagine the case where an early assessment is made of a
| child, that they are this-or-that type of child, and that
| therefore they respond more strongly to this-or-that information.
| Well, then the ai can far more easily steer the child in whatever
| direction they want. Over a lifetime. Chapters and long story
| lines, themes, could all play a role to sensitise and predispose
| individuals into to certain directions.
|
| Yeah, this could be used to help people. But how does one
| feedback into the type of "help"/guidance one wants?
| asim wrote:
| I recently saw this https://arxiv.org/pdf/2503.11714 on
| conversational networks and it got me thinking that a lot of the
| problem with polarization and power struggle is the lack of
| dialog. We consume a lot, and while we have opinions too much of
| it shapes our thinking. There is no dialog. There is no
| questioning. There is no discussion. On networks like X it's
| posts and comments. Even here it's the same, it's comments with
| replies but it's not truly a discussion. It's rebuttals. A
| conversation is two ways and equal. It's a mutual dialog to
| understand differing positions. Yes elite can reshape what
| society thinks with AI, and it's already happening. But we also
| have the ability to redefine our networks and tools to be two
| way, not 1:N.
| barrenko wrote:
| Humans can only handle dialog while under the Dunbar's law /
| limit / number, anything else is pure fancy.
| piva00 wrote:
| I recommend reading "In the Swarm" by Byung-Chul Han, and also
| his "The Crisis of Narration"; in those he tries to tackle
| exactly these issues in contemporary society.
|
| His "Psychopolitics" talks about the manipulation of masses for
| political purposes using the digital environment, when written
| the LLM hype wasn't ongoing yet but it can definitely apply to
| this technology as well.
| emporas wrote:
| Dialogue you mean, conversation-debate, not dialog the screen
| displayed element, for interfacing with the user.
|
| The group screaming the louder is considered to be correct, it
| is pretty bad.
|
| There needs to an identity system, in which people are filtered
| out when the conversation devolves into ad-hominem attacks, and
| only debaters with the right balance of knowledge and no hidden
| agenda's join the conversation.
|
| Reddit for example is a good implementation of something like
| this, but the arbiter cannot have that much power over their
| words, or their identities, getting them banned for example.
|
| > Even here it's the same, it's comments with replies but it's
| not truly a discussion.
|
| For technology/science/computer subjects HN is very good, but
| for other subjects not so good, as it is the case with every
| other forum.
|
| But a solution will be found eventually. I think what is
| missing is an identity system to hop around different ways of
| debating and not be tied to a specific website or service.
| Solving this problem is not easy, so there has to be a lot of
| experimentation before an adequate solution is established.
| emsign wrote:
| That's the plan. Culture is losing authenticity due to the
| constant rumination of past creative works, now supercharged with
| AI. Authentic culture is deemed a luxury now as it can't compete
| in the artificial tech marketplaces and people feel isolated and
| lost because culture loses its human touch and relatability.
|
| That's why the billionaires are such fans of fundamentalist
| religion, they then want to sell and propagate religion to the
| disillusioned desperate masses to keep them docile and confused
| about what's really going on in the world. It's a business plan
| to gain absolute power over society.
| delichon wrote:
| There is nothing we could do to more effectively hand elites
| exclusive control of the persuasive power of AI than to ban it.
| So it wouldn't be surprising if AI is deployed by elites to
| persuade people to ban itself. It could start with an essay on
| how elites could use AI to shape mass preferences.
| HPsquared wrote:
| AI alignment is a pretty tremendous "power lever". You can see
| why there's so much investment.
| noobermin wrote:
| May be I'm just ignorant, but I tried to skim the beginning of
| this, and it's honestly just hard to even accept their set-up.
| Like, the fact that any of the terms[^] (`y`, `H`, `p`, etc) are
| well defined as functions that can map some range of the reals is
| hard to accept. Like in reality, what "an elite wants," the
| "scalar" it can derive from pushing policy 1, even the cost
| functions they define seem to not even be definable as functions
| in a formal sense and even the co-domain of said terms cannot map
| well to a definable set that can be mapped to [0,1].
|
| All the time in actual politics, elites and popular movements
| alike find their own opinions and desires clash internally (yes,
| even a single person's desires or actions self-conflict at
| times). A thing one desires at say time `t` per their definitions
| doesn't match at other times, or even at the same `t`. This is
| clearly an opinion of someone who doesn't read these kind of
| papers, but I don't know how one can even be sure the defined
| terms are well-defined so I'm not sure how anyone can even
| proceed with any analysis in this kind of argument. They write it
| so matter-of-fact-ly that I assume this is normal in economics.
| Is it?
|
| Certain systems where the rules a bit more clear might benefit
| from formalism like this but politics? Politics is the
| quintessential example of conflicting desires, compromise,
| unintended consequences... I could go on.
|
| [^] calling them terms as they are symbols in their formulae but
| my entire point is they are not really well defined maps or
| functions.
| lambdaone wrote:
| I think this ship has already sailed, with a lot of comments on
| social media already being AI-generated and posted by bots.
| Things are only going to get worse as time goes on.
|
| I think the next battleground is going to be over steering the
| opinions and advice generatd by LLMs and other models by
| poisoning the training set.
| zingar wrote:
| My neighbour asked me the other day (well, more stated as a
| "point" that he thought was in his favour): "how could a
| billionaire make people believe something?" The topic was the
| influence of the various industrial complexes on politics (my
| view: total) and I was too shocked by his naivety to say: "easy:
| buy a newspaper". There is only one national newspaper here in
| the UK that is not controlled by one of four wealthy families,
| and it's the one newspaper whose headlines my neighbour routinely
| dismisses.
|
| The thought of a reduction in the cost of that control does not
| fill me with confidence for humanity.
| euroderf wrote:
| Thanks to social media and AI, the cost of inundating the
| mediasphere with a Big Lie (made plausible thru sheer repetition)
| has been made much more affordable now. This is why the
| administration is trumpeting lower prices!
| andsoitis wrote:
| > has been made much more affordable now
|
| So more democratized?
| pjc50 wrote:
| Media is "loudest volume wins", so the relative affordability
| doesn't matter; there's a sort of Jevons paradox thing where
| making it cheaper just means that more money will be spent on
| it. Presidential election spending only goes up, for example.
| input_sh wrote:
| No, those with more money than you can now push even more
| slop than they could before.
|
| _You_ cannot compete with that.
| themafia wrote:
| So if I had enough money I could get CBS news to deny the
| Holocaust? Of course not. These companies operate under
| government license and that would certainly be the end of it
| through public complaint. I think it suggests a much different
| dynamic than most of this discussion presumes.
|
| In particular, our own CIA has shown that the "Big Lie" is
| actually surprisingly cheap. It's not about paying off news
| directors or buying companies, it's about directly implanting a
| handful of actors into media companies, and spiking or
| advancing stories according to your whims. The people with the
| capacity to do this can then be very selective with who does
| and does not get to tell the Big Lies. They're not particularly
| motivated by taking bribes.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > So if I had enough money I could get CBS news to deny the
| Holocaust? Of course not.
|
| You absolutely could. But wouldn't be CBS news, it would be
| ChatGPT or some other LLM bot that you're interacting with
| everywhere. And it wouldn't say outright "the holocaust
| didn't happen", but it would frame the responses to your
| queries in a way that casts doubt on it, or that leaves you
| thinking it probably didn't happen. We've seen this before
| (the "manifest destiny" of "settling" the West, the
| whitewashing of slavery,
|
| For a modern example, you already have Fox News denying that
| there was no violent attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
| And look how Grokipedia treats certain topics differently
| than Wikipedia.
|
| It's not only possible, it's likely.
| tencentshill wrote:
| Does government licensed mean at the pleasure of the
| president? The BBC technically operates at the pleasure of
| the King
| everdrive wrote:
| It's important to remember that being a "free thinker" often just
| means "being weird." It's quite celebrated to "think for
| yourself" and people always connect this to specific political
| ideas, and suggest that free thinkers will have "better"
| political ideas by not going along with the crowd. On one hand,
| this is not necessarily true; the crowd could potentially have
| the better idea and the free thinker could have some crazy or bad
| idea.
|
| But also, there is a heavy cost to being out of sync with people;
| how many people can you relate to? Do the people you talk to
| think you're weird? You don't do the same things, know the same
| things, talk about the same things, etc. You're the odd man out,
| and potentially for not much benefit. Being a "free thinker"
| doesn't necessarily guarantee much of anything. Your ideas are
| potentially original, but not necessarily better. One of my "free
| thinker" ideas is that bed frames and box springs are mostly
| superfluous and a mattress on the ground is more comfortable and
| cheaper. (getting up from a squat should not be difficult if
| you're even moderately healthy) Does this really buy me anything?
| No. I'm living to my preferences and in line with my ideas, but
| people just think it's weird, and would be really uncomfortable
| with it unless I'd already built up enough trust / goodwill to
| overcome this quirk.
| rusk wrote:
| > bed frames and box springs are mostly superfluous and a
| mattress on the ground is more comfortable and cheaper
|
| I was also of this persuasion and did this for many years and
| for me the main issue was drafts close to the floor.
|
| The key reason I believe though is mattresses can absorb damp
| so you wana keep that air gap there to lessen this effect and
| provide ventilation.
|
| > getting up from a squat should not be difficult
|
| Not much use if you're elderly or infirm.
|
| Other cons: close to the ground so close to dirt and easy
| access for pests. You also don't get that extra bit of air gap
| insulation offered by the extra 6 inches of space and whatever
| you've stashed under there.
|
| Other pros: extra bit of storage space. Easy to roll out to a
| seated position if you're feeling tired or unwell
|
| It's good to talk to people about your crazy ideas and get some
| sun and air on that head cannon LOL
|
| Futon's are designed specifically for use case you have
| described so best to use one of those rather than a mattress
| which is going to absorb damp from the floor.
| everdrive wrote:
| > The key reason I believe though is mattresses can absorb
| damp so you wana keep that air gap there to lessen this
| effect and provide ventilation.
|
| I was concerned about this as well, but it hasn't been an
| issue with us for years. I definitely think this must be
| climate-dependent.
|
| Regardless, I appreciate you taking the argument seriously
| and discussing pros and cons.
| rusk wrote:
| > I appreciate you taking the argument seriously
|
| Like I say, I have suffered similar delusion in the past
| and I never pass up the opportunity to help a brother out
| benlivengood wrote:
| A major con of bedframes is annoying squeaks. Joints bear a
| lot of load and there usually isn't diagonal bracing to speak
| of, so they get noisy after almost no time at all. Fasteners
| loosen or wear the frame materials. I have yet to find one
| that stays quiet more than a few months or a year without
| retightening things; but I haven't tried a full platform
| construction with continuous walls which I expect might work
| better, but also sounds annoyingly expensive and heavy.
| adamwong246 wrote:
| To live freely is reward enough. We born alone, die alone, and
| in between, more loneliness. No reason to pretend that your
| friends and family will be there for you, or that their
| approval will save you. Playing their social games will not
| garner you much.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| Humans are a social species, and quality of relationships is
| consistently shown to correlate with mental health.
| boxed wrote:
| I don't think "persuasion" is the key here. People change
| political preferences based on group identity. Here AI tools are
| even more powerful. You don't have to persuade anyone, just
| create a fake bandwagon.
| sega_sai wrote:
| Given the increasing wealth inequality, it is unclear if costs
| are really a factor here, as amounts like 1M$ is nothing when you
| have 1B$.
| arthurfirst wrote:
| Most 'media' is produced content designed to manipulate --
| nothing new. The article isn't really AI specific as others have
| said.
|
| Personally my fear based manipulation detection is very well
| tuned and that is 95% of all the manipulations you will ever get
| from so-called 'elites' who are better called 'entitled' and act
| like children when they do not get their way.
|
| I trust ChatGPT for cooking lessons. I code with Claude code and
| Gemini but they know where they stand and who is the boss ;)
|
| There is never a scenario for me where I defer final judgment on
| anything personally.
|
| I realize others may want to blindly trust the 'authorities' as
| its the easy path, but I cured myself of that long before AI was
| ever a thing.
|
| Take responsibility for your choices and AI is relegated to the
| role of tool as it should be.
| Retric wrote:
| Sure, and advertising has zero effect on you.
|
| Manipulation works in subtle ways. Shifting the Overton window
| isn't about individual events, this isn't the work of days but
| decades. People largely abandoned unions in the US for example,
| but not because they are useless.
| themafia wrote:
| It's not about persuading you from "russian bot farms." Which I
| think is a ridiculous and unnecessarily reductive viewpoint.
|
| It's about hijacking all of your federal and commercial data that
| these companies can get their hands on and building a highly
| specific and detailed profile of you. DOGE wasn't an audit. It
| was an excuse to exfiltrate mountains of your sensitive data into
| their secret models and into places like Palantir. Then using AI
| to either imitate you or to possibly predict your reactions to
| certain stimulus.
|
| Then presumably the game is finding the best way to turn you into
| a human slave of the state. I assure you, they're not going to
| use twitter to manipulate your vote for the president, they have
| much deeper designs on your wealth and ultimately your own
| personhood.
|
| It's too easy to punch down. I recommend anyone presume the best
| of actual people and the worst of our corporations and
| governments. The data seems clear.
| arthurfirst wrote:
| Bang on.
|
| > It's not about persuading you from "russian bot farms." Which
| I think is a ridiculous and unnecessarily reductive viewpoint.
|
| Not an accidental 'viewpoint'. A deliberate framing to exactly
| exclude what you pointed out from the discourse. Sure therer
| are dummies who actually believe it, but they are not serious
| humans.
|
| If the supposedly evil russians or their bots are the enemy
| then people pay much less attention to the real problems at
| home.
| bee_rider wrote:
| We can have Russian bot problems and domestic bot problems
| simultaneously.
| pessimizer wrote:
| We can also have bugs crawling under your skin trying to
| control your mind.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Are you saying it is equally unlikely that there are mind
| controls, and that Russia uses bots for propaganda? I'd
| expect most countries do by now, and Russia isn't
| uniquely un-tech-savvy.
| graeme wrote:
| They really do run Russian bot farms though. It isn't a
| secret. Some of their planning reports have leaked.
|
| There are people whose job it is day in day out to influence
| Western opinion. You can see their work under any comment
| about Ukraine on twitter, they're pretty easy to recognize
| but they flood the zone.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Sure, they exist (wouldn't be credible if they didn't). But
| it's a red herring.
| arthurfirst wrote:
| > There are people whose job it is day in day out to
| influence Western opinion
|
| CNN/CIA/NBC/ABC/FBI? etc?
| Capricorn2481 wrote:
| Some day you're going to need to learn that people can
| not trust these groups and still be aware that Russia is
| knee deep in manipulating our governance. Dismissing
| everyone that doesn't bury their head in the sand as
| brainwashed is old hat.
|
| Why you list every news group except Fox, which dwarfs
| all those networks, is a self report.
| maxerickson wrote:
| My hn comments are a better (and probably not particularly
| good) view into my personality than any data the government
| could conceivably have collected.
|
| If what you say is true, why should we fear their bizarre mind
| control fantasy?
| sc68cal wrote:
| Not every person has bared their soul on HN.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Yeah, I haven't either. That's my point.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| The rant from 12 monkeys was quite prescient. On the bright
| side, if the data still exists whenever agi finally happens, we
| are all sort of immortal. They can spin up a copy of any of us
| any time... Nevermind, that isn't a bright side.
| arthurfirst wrote:
| Poison the corpus.
|
| 18 years ago I stood up at a super computing symposium as
| asked the presenter what would happen if I fed his impressive
| predictive models garbage data on the sly... they still have
| no answer for that.
|
| Make up so much crap it's impossible to tell the real you
| from the nonsense.
| pimlottc wrote:
| "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong
| figures, will the right answers come out?"
| derangedHorse wrote:
| > DOGE wasn't an audit. It was an excuse to exfiltrate
| mountains of your sensitive data into their secret models and
| into places like Palantir
|
| Do you have any actual evidence of this?
|
| > I recommend anyone presume the best of actual people and the
| worst of our corporations and governments
|
| Corporations and governments are made of actual people.
|
| > Then presumably the game is finding the best way to turn you
| into a human slave of the state.
|
| "the state" doesn't have one grand agenda for enslavement. I've
| met people who work for the state at various levels and the
| policies they support that might lead towards that end result
| are usually not intentionally doing so.
|
| "Don't attribute to malice what can be explained by
| incompetence"
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| >Do you have any actual evidence of this?
|
| Apart from the exfiltration of data, the complete absence of
| any savings or efficiencies, and the fact that DOGE closed as
| soon as the exfiltration was over?
|
| >Corporations and governments are made of actual people.
|
| And we know how well that goes.
|
| >"the state" doesn't have one grand agenda for enslavement.
|
| The _government_ doesn 't. The people who own the government
| clearly do. If they didn't they'd be working hard to increase
| economic freedom, lower debt, invest in public health, make
| education better and more affordable, make it easier to start
| and run a small business, limit the power of corporations and
| big money, and clamp down on extractive wealth inequality.
|
| They are very very clearly and obviously doing the opposite
| of all of these things.
|
| And they have a history of links to the old slave states, and
| both a commercial and personal interest in neo-slavery - such
| as for-profit prisons, among other examples.
|
| All of this gets sold as "freedom", but even Orwell had that
| one worked out.
|
| Those who have been paying attention to how election fixers
| like SCL/Cambridge Analytica work(ed) know where the bodies
| are buried. The whole point of these operations is to use
| personalised, individual data profiling to influence voting
| political behaviour, by creating messaging that triggers
| individual responses that can be aggregated into a pattern of
| mass influence leveraged through social media.
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| > The people who own the government clearly do.
|
| Has anyone in this thread ever met an actual person? All of
| the ones I know are cartoonishly bad at keeping secrets,
| and even worse at making long term plans.
|
| The closest thing we have to anyone with a long term plan
| is silly shit like Putins ridiculous rebuilding of the
| Russian Empire or religious fundamentalist horseshit like
| project 2025 that will die with the elderly simpletons that
| run it.
|
| These guys aren't masterminds, they're dumbasses who read
| books written by different dumbasses and make plans thay
| won't survive contact with reality.
|
| Let's face it, both Orwell and Huxley were wrong. They both
| assumed the ruling class would be competent. Huxley was
| closest, but even he had to invent the Alpha's. Sadly our
| Alphas are really just Betas with too much self esteem.
|
| Maybe AI will one day give us turbocharged dumbasses who
| are actually competent. For now I think we're safe from all
| but short term disruption.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| I think you're wildly underestimating the heritage
| foundation. It's called project 2025 but they've
| essentially been dedicated to planning something like it
| since the 1970s. They are smart, focused, well funded,
| and successful. They are only one group, there are
| similar think tanks with similarly long term policy
| goals.
|
| Most people are short sighted but relatively well
| intentioned creatures. That's not true of _all_ people.
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| > I think you're wildly underestimating the heritage
| foundation.
|
| It's possible that I am. Certainly they've had some
| success over the years, as have other think tanks like
| them. I mean, they're part of the reason we got embroiled
| in the middle-east after 9/11. They've certainly been
| influential.
|
| That said, their problem is that they are true believers
| and the people in charge are not (and never will be).
| Someone else in this post described it as a flock of
| psychopaths, and I think that's the perfect way to phrase
| it. Society is run by a flock of psychopaths just doing
| whatever comes naturally as they seek to optimize their
| own short term advantage.
|
| Sometimes their interests converge and something like
| Heritage sees part of their agenda instituted, but
| equally often these organizations fade into irrelevance
| as their agendas diverge from whatever works to the
| pyscho of the moments advantage. To avoid that Heritage
| can either change their agenda, or accept that they've
| become defanged. More often than not they choose the
| former.
|
| I suppose we'll know for sure in 20 years, but I'd be
| willing to bet that Heritages agenda then won't look
| anything like the agenda they're advancing today. In fact
| if we look at their Agenda from 20 years ago we can see
| that it looks nothing like their agenda today.
|
| For example, Heritage was very much pro-immigration until
| about 20 years ago. As early as 1986 they were advocating
| for increased immigration, and even in 2006 they were
| publishing reports advocating for the economic benefits
| of it. Then suddenly it fell out of fashion amongst a
| certain class of ruler and they reversed their entire
| stance to maintain their relevance.
|
| They also used to sing a very different tune regarding
| healthcare, advocating for a the individual mandate as
| opposed to single payer. Again, it became unpopular and
| they simply "changed their mind" and began to fight
| against the policy that they were actually among the
| first to propose.
|
| *EDIT* To cite a more recent example consider their
| stance on free trade. Even as recently as this year they
| were advocating for free trade and against tariffs
| warning that tariffs might lead to a recession. They've
| since reversed course, because while they are largely run
| by true believers they can't admit that publicly or they
| risk losing any hope of actually accomplishing any of
| their agenda.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| They aren't changing their mind. They just try and keep
| proposals palatable to the voting public, and push those
| proposals further over time.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratchet_effect
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| It might seem like that's all that's happening, but if
| you look to the history you can see that they've
| completely reversed course on a number of important
| subjects. We're not talking about advancing further along
| the same path here as the Overton window shifts, we're
| talking about abandoning the very principals upon which
| they were founded because they are, in fact, as
| incompetent as everyone else is.
|
| These people aren't super-villains with genuine long term
| plans, they're dumbasses and grifters doing what grifters
| gotta do to keep their cushy consulting jobs.
|
| To compare the current stances to the 2005 stances:
|
| * Social Security privatization (completely failed in
| 2005)
|
| * Spending restraint (federal spending increased
| dramatically)
|
| * Individual mandate (reversed after Obamacare adopted
| it)
|
| * Pro-immigration economics stance (reversed to
| restrictionism)
|
| * Robust free trade advocacy (effectively abandoned under
| Trump alignment)
|
| * Limited government principles (replaced with executive
| power consolidation)
|
| * Etc.
|
| In 20 more years it will have all changed again.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| We knew in 2005 that "spending restraint" only applied to
| Democratic priorities. We knew in 2005 that "pro-
| immigration" policies were more about the businesses with
| cheap labor needs than a liking of immigrants. We knew in
| 2005 that "free trade advocacy" was significantly about
| ruining unions. We knew in 2005 that "limited government
| principles" weren't genuine.
|
| They haven't changed much on their core beliefs. They've
| just discarded the camouflage.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Orwell did not. He modeled the state after his experience
| as an officer of the British Empire and the Soviets.
|
| The state, particularly police states, that control
| information, require process and consistency, not
| intelligence. They don't require grand plans, just
| control. I've spent most of my career in or adjacent to
| government. I've witnessed remarkable feats of stupidity
| and incompetence -- yet these organizations are
| materially successful at performing their core functions.
|
| The issue with AI is that it can churn out necessary
| bullshit and allow the competence challenged to function
| more effectively.
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| I agree. The government doesn't need a long term plan, or
| the ability to execute on it for their to be negative
| outcomes.
|
| In this thread though I was responding to an earlier
| assertion that the people who run the government have
| such a plan. I think we're both agreed that they don't,
| and probably can't, plan any more than a few years out in
| any way that matters.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Fair point, but I think in that case, you have to look at
| the government officials and the political string-pullers
| distinctly.
|
| The money people who have been funding think tanks like
| the Heritage Foundation absolutely have a long-running
| strategy and playbook that they've been running for
| years. The conceit that is really obvious about folks in
| the MAGA-sphere is they tend to voice what they are
| doing. The "deep state" is used as a cudgel to torture
| civil servants and clerks. But the rotating door is the
| lobbyists and clients. When some of the more dramatic
| money/influence people say POTUS is a "divine gift", they
| don't mean that he's some messianic figure (although the
| President likely hears that), they are saying "here is a
| blank canvas to get what we want".
|
| The government is just another tool.
| EasyMark wrote:
| A lot of people seem to think all government is
| incompetent. While they may not be as efficient as
| corporations seeking profits, they do consistently make
| progress in limiting our freedom over time. You don't
| have to be a genius to figure things out over time, and
| government has all the time in the world. Our (USA)
| current regime is definitely taking efforts to
| consolidate info on and surveil citizens as never before.
| That's why DOGE, I believe served two purposes, gutting
| regulatory government agencies overseeing billionaire
| bros activities and also providing both government
| intelligence agencies and the billionaire bros more data
| to build up profiles for both nefarious activities and
| because "more information is better than less
| information" when you are seeking power over others. I
| don't think it is simply "they're big dummies and assume
| they weren't up to anything" that others are trying to
| sell holds water as Project 2025 was planned for well
| over a decade.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| They are actually more efficient. Remember in any agency
| there are the political appointees, who are generally
| idiots, and the professionals, who are usually very
| competent but perhaps boring, as government service
| filters for people who value safety. There are as many
| people doing fuck-all at Google as at the Department of
| Labor, they just goof off in different ways.
|
| The professionals are hamstrung by weird politically
| imposed rules, and generally try to make dumb policy
| decisions actually work. But even in Trumpland, everybody
| is getting their Social Security checks and unemployment.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Has anyone in this thread ever met an actual person?
| All of the ones I know are cartoonishly bad at keeping
| secrets, and even worse at making long term plans.
|
| That's the trick, though. You don't have to keep it
| secret any more. Project 2025 was openly published!
|
| Modern politics has weaponized shamelessness. People used
| to resign over consensual affairs with adults.
| fragmede wrote:
| Those simpletons seem to have been able to enact their
| plans, so you can be smug about being smarter than they
| are, but it seems that they've been able to put their
| plan into action, so I'm not sure who's more effective.
| throwawaylaptop wrote:
| You're ignoring that the people that are effective at
| getting things done are more likely to do the crazy
| things required to begin their plans.
|
| Just because the average person cant add fractions
| together or stop eating donuts doesn't mean that Elon
| cant get some stuff together if he sets his mind to it.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| > Apart from the exfiltration of data, the complete absence
| of any savings or efficiencies, and the fact that DOGE
| closed as soon as the exfiltration was over?
|
| IMHO everyone kinda knew from the start that DOGE wouldn't
| achieve much because the cost centers where gains could
| realistically be made are off-limits (mainly social
| security and medicare/medicaid). What that leaves you with
| is making cuts in other small areas and sure you could cut
| a few billion here and there but when compared against the
| governments budget, that's a drop in the bucket.
| mattmcal wrote:
| Social security, Medicare, and Medicaid are properly
| termed "entitlements", not "cost centers". You're right
| that non-discretionary spending dwarfs discretionary
| spending though.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Entitlements _cost_ quite a bit of money to fulfill.
|
| Quibbling over terminology doesn't erase the point - that
| a significant portion of the Federal budget is money
| virtually everyone agrees shouldn't be touched much.
| mattmcal wrote:
| You're not wrong, I edited my comment. That said, I think
| it is important to use clear terminology that doesn't
| blur the lines between spending that can theoretically be
| reduced, versus spending that requires an act of Congress
| to modify. DOGE and the executive have already flouted
| that line with their attempts to shutter programs and
| spending already approved by Congress.
| thfuran wrote:
| But fulfilling obligations isn't inefficiency or fraud,
| and that's what DOGE purported to be attempting to
| eliminate.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Musk promised savings of $1-2 trillion.
| (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdj38mekdkgo)
|
| That's more than the entire discretionary budget. Cutting
| that much _requires_ cutting entitlements, even if the
| government stopped doing _literally everything else_.
| bigbadfeline wrote:
| >Entitlements cost quite a bit of money to fulfill.
|
| Entitlements are funded by separate (FICA) taxes which
| form a significant portion of all federal income, _they
| are called entitlements for that specific reason_.
|
| > Quibbling over terminology doesn't erase the point -
| that a significant portion of the Federal budget is money
| virtually everyone agrees shouldn't be touched much.
|
| Quibbling over quibbling without mentioning the separate
| account for FICA/Social Security taxes is a sure sign of
| manipulation. As is not mentioning that the top 10% are
| exempt from the tax after a minuscule for them amount.
|
| Oh, and guess what - realized capital gains are not
| subject to Social Security tax - that's primarily how
| rich incomes are made. Then, unrealized capital gains
| aren't taxed at all - that's how wealth and privilege are
| accumulated.
|
| All this is happening virtually without opposition due to
| rich-funded bots manipulating any internet chatter about
| it. Is it then surprising that manipulation has reached a
| level of audacity that hypes solving the US fiscal
| problems at the expense of grandma's entitlements?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Entitlements are funded by separate (FICA) taxes which
| form a significant portion of all federal income, they
| are called entitlements for that specific reason.
|
| No, they aren't, categorically, and no, that's not what
| the name refers to. Entitlements include both things with
| dedicated taxes and specialized trust funds (Social
| Security, Medicare), and things that are normal on-budget
| programs (Medicaid, etc.)
|
| _Originally_ , the name "entitlement" was used as a
| budget distinction for programs based on the principle of
| an earned entitlement (in the common language sense)
| through specific work history (Social Security, Medicare,
| Veterans benefits, Railroad retirement) [0], but it was
| later expanded to things like Medicaid and welfare
| programs that are not based on that principle and which
| were less politically well-supported, as a deliberate
| political strategy to drive down the popularity of
| traditional entitlements by association.
|
| [0] Some, but not all, of which had dedicated trust funds
| funded by taxes on the covered work, so there is a loose
| correlation between them and the kind of programs you
| seem to think the name exclusively refers to, but even
| originally it was not exclusively the case.
| mason_mpls wrote:
| I think we're mistaking incompetence with malice in regards
| to DOGE here
| fragmede wrote:
| Hanlon's razor is stupid and wrong. One should be wary
| and be aware that incompetence does look like malice
| sometimes, but that doesn't mean that malice doesn't
| exist. See /r/MaliciousCompliance for examples. It's
| possible that DOGE is as dumb as it looked. It's also
| possible that the smokescreen it generated also happened
| to have the information leak as described. If the
| information leak happened due to incompetence, but
| malicious bad actors still got data they were after by
| using a third party as a Mark, does that actor being
| incompetent really make the difference?
| nhod wrote:
| Sorry, no. Hanlon's razor is _usually_ smart and correct,
| for the majority of cases, including this one.
|
| In this case, it is a huge stretch to ascribe DOGE to
| incompetence or to stupidity. Thus, we CAN ascribe it to
| malice.
|
| Elon Musk and Donald Trump are many things, but they are
| NOT stupid and NOT incompetent. Elon is the richest man
| in the world running some of the most innovative and
| important companies in the world. Donald Trump has
| managed to get elected twice despite the fact (because of
| the fact?) that he a serial liar and a convicted
| criminal.
|
| They and other actors involved have demonstrated
| extraordinary malice, time and time again.
|
| It is safe to ascribe this one to malice. And Hanlon's
| Razor holds.
| hopelite wrote:
| "Usually", "not intentionally" does not exactly convey your
| own sense of confidence that it's not happening. That just
| stood out to me.
|
| As someone who knows how all this is unfolding because I've
| been part of implementing it, I agree, there's no "Unified
| Plan for Enslavement". You have to think of it more like a
| hive mind of mostly Cluster B and somewhat Cluster A people
| that you rightfully identify as making up the corporations
| and governments. Some call it a swarm, which is also helpful
| in understanding it; the murmuration of a flock of
| psychopaths moving and shifting organically, while mostly
| remaining in general unison.
|
| Your last quote is of course a useful rule of thumb too,
| however, I would say it's more useful to just assume
| narcissistic motivations in everything in the contemporary
| era, even if it does not always work out for them the way one
| faction had hoped or strategized; Nemesis be damned, and all.
| itsastrawman wrote:
| I think the quote is misused. Narcissistic self interest is
| neither incompetence nor malice. It's something else
| entirely.
| gtowey wrote:
| It's malice. Nobody ever sees themselves as the bad guy.
| They always have some rationalization of why what they're
| doing is justified.
| fragmede wrote:
| I'm not bad, I only did $bad_thing to teach you a lesson!
| laserlight wrote:
| > "Don't attribute to malice what can be explained by
| incompetence"
|
| I don't think there's anything that cannot be explained by
| incompetence, so this statement is moot. If it walks like
| malice, quacks like malice, it's malice.
| itsastrawman wrote:
| There are more than two explanations.
| bigyabai wrote:
| By all means, give us a few examples.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > Corporations and governments are made of actual people.
|
| Corporations and governments are made up of processes which
| are carried out by people. The people carrying out those
| processes don't decide what they are.
| jakeydus wrote:
| Also, legally, in the United States corporations _are_
| people.
| itsastrawman wrote:
| The legal world is a pseudowolrd constructed of rhetoric.
| It isn't real. The law doesn't actually exist. Justices
| aren't interested in justice, ethics or morality.
|
| They are interested in paying the bills, having a good
| time and power like almost everyone else.
|
| They don't have special immunity from ego, debt, or
| hunger.
|
| The legal system is flawed because people are flawed.
|
| Corporations aren't people. Not even legally. The legal
| system knows that because all people know that.
|
| If you think that's true legally, then you agree the
| legal system is fraudulent rhetoric.
| fragmede wrote:
| Corporations do have a special immunity to being killed
| though. If I killed a person, I'd go to prison for a long
| time. Executed for it, even. Corporations can kill
| someone and get off with a fine.
| pimlottc wrote:
| > > DOGE wasn't an audit. It was an excuse to exfiltrate
| mountains of your sensitive data into their secret models and
| into places like Palantir
|
| > Do you have any actual evidence of this?
|
| I will not comment on motives, but DOGE absolutely shredded
| the safeguards and firewalls that were created to protect
| privacy and prevent dangerous and unlawful aggregations of
| sensitive personal data.
|
| They obtained accesses that would have taken months by normal
| protocols and would have been outright denied in most cases,
| and then used it with basically zero oversight or
| accountability.
|
| It was a huge violation of anything resembling best practices
| from both a technological and bureaucratic perspective.
| blindriver wrote:
| > I will not comment on motives, but DOGE absolutely
| shredded the safeguards and firewalls that were created to
| protect privacy and prevent dangerous and unlawful
| aggregations of sensitive personal data.
|
| Do you have any actual evidence of this?
| fsflover wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46149124
| blindriver wrote:
| The comment you linked to is deleted. Do you happen to
| have anything else? I'm concerned by the accusations and
| want to know more.
| freejazz wrote:
| Here's one example. Have you not been following DOGE? You
| do come off like you're disingenuously concern trolling
| over something you don't agree with politically.
|
| https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/04/whistleblower-doge-
| sipho...
| overfeed wrote:
| > You do come off like you're disingenuously concern
| trolling over something you don't agree with politically.
|
| Beyond mere political alignment, lots of actual DOGE boys
| were recruited (or volunteered) from the valley, and hang
| around HN. Don't be surprised by intentional muddying of
| the waters. There are bunch of people invested in
| managing the reputation of DOGE, so their association
| with it doesn't become a stain on theirs.
| freejazz wrote:
| Great point. It's all so funny because DOGE was just so
| ridiculous on the face of itself.
| fsflover wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43704481
| pimlottc wrote:
| https://www.npr.org/2025/04/15/nx-s1-5355896/doge-nlrb-
| elon-...
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/doge-data-access-hhs/
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/02/do
| ge-...
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| > "Don't attribute to malice what can be explained by
| incompetence"
|
| What's the difference when the mass support for incompetence
| is indiscernible from malice?
|
| What does the difference between Zuckerberg being an evil
| mastermind vs Zuckerberg being a greedy simpleton actually
| matter if the end result is the same ultra-financialization
| mixed with an oppressive surveillance apparatus?
|
| CNN just struck a deal with Kalshi. We're betting on world
| events. At this point the incompetence shouldn't be
| considered different from malice. This isn't someone
| forgetting to return a library book, these are people with
| real power making real lasting effects on real lives. If
| they're this incompetent with this much power, that power
| should be taken away.
| peddling-brink wrote:
| > What's the difference when the mass support for
| incompetence is indiscernible from malice?
|
| POSIWID
|
| The purpose of a system is what it does. - Stafford Beer
|
| I try to look at the things I create through this lens. My
| intentions don't really matter if people get hurt based on
| my actions.
| dizlexic wrote:
| The number of responses that could have just been "no I
| don't" is remarkable.
|
| > "Don't attribute to malice what can be explained by
| incompetence"
|
| To add to that, never be shocked at the level of
| incompetence.
| thuuuomas wrote:
| > Corporations and governments are made of actual people.
|
| Hand-waving away the complex incentives these superhuman
| structures follow & impose.
| deepsquirrelnet wrote:
| > Berulis said he and his colleagues grew even more alarmed
| when they noticed nearly two dozen login attempts from a
| Russian Internet address (83.149.30,186) that presented valid
| login credentials for a DOGE employee account
|
| > "Whoever was attempting to log in was using one of the
| newly created accounts that were used in the other DOGE
| related activities and it appeared they had the correct
| username and password due to the authentication flow only
| stopping them due to our no-out-of-country logins policy
| activating," Berulis wrote. "There were more than 20 such
| attempts, and what is particularly concerning is that many of
| these login attempts occurred within 15 minutes of the
| accounts being created by DOGE engineers."
|
| https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/04/whistleblower-doge-
| sipho...
|
| I'm surprised this didn't make bigger news.
| yks wrote:
| Every time I see post-DOGE kvetching about foreign
| governments' hacking attempts, I'm quite bewildered. Guys,
| it's done, we're fully and thoroughly hacked already.
| Obviously I don't know if Elon or Big Balls have already
| given Putin data on all American military personnel, but I
| do know, that we're always one ketamine trip gone wrong
| away from such event.
|
| The absolute craziest heist just went in front of our eyes,
| and everyone collectively shrugged off and moved on,
| presumably to enjoy spy novels, where the most hidden
| subversion attempts are getting caught by the cunning
| agents.
| CPLX wrote:
| > Corporations and governments are made of actual people.
|
| Actual people are made up of individual cells.
|
| Do you think pointing that out is damaging to the argument
| that humans have discernible interests, personalities, and
| behaviors?
| freejazz wrote:
| >Do you have any actual evidence of this?
|
| Any evidence it was an actual audit?
| evolve2k wrote:
| > Do you have any actual evidence of this?
|
| There was a bunch of news on data leaks out at the time.
|
| https://cybernews.com/security/whistleblower-doge-data-
| leak-...
|
| https://www.thedailybeast.com/doge-goons-dump-millions-of-
| so...
|
| https://securityboulevard.com/2025/04/whistleblower-musks-
| do...
|
| But one example:
|
| "A cybersecurity specialist with the U.S. National Labor
| Relations Board is saying that technologist with Elon Musk's
| cost-cutting DOGE group may have caused a security breach
| after illegally removing sensitive data from the agency's
| servers and trying to cover their tracks.
|
| In a lengthy testimonial sent to the Senate Intelligence
| Committee and made public this week, Daniel Berulis said in
| sworn whistleblower complaint that soon after the workers
| with President Trump's DOGE (Department of Government
| Efficiency) came into the NLRB's offices in early March, he
| and other tech pros with the agency noticed the presence of
| software tools similar to what cybercriminals use to evade
| detection in agency systems that disabled monitoring and
| other security features used to detect and block threats."
| hopelite wrote:
| Are you aware you are saying that on HN of YC, the home of such
| wonderful projects as Flock?
| hopelite wrote:
| I guess there is some disagreement about Flock being a
| wonderful project?
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| The state? Palantir isn't the state.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Go on, who does Palantir primarily provide services to?
|
| If I get shot by the FBI, is it a non-state action because
| they used Glock GmbH's product to do it?
| mindslight wrote:
| The greatest trick extraconstitutional corporate government
| ever pulled was convincing people that it didn't exist.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| "The state" is an abstraction that serves as a facade for the
| ruling (capitalist, in the developed West) class.
| Corporations are another set of abstractions that serve as a
| facade for the capitalist class (they are also, overtly even
| though this is popularly ignored, creatures of the state
| through law.)
| emsign wrote:
| You got it not quite right. Putin is a billionaire just like
| the tech lords or oil barons in the US. They all belong to the
| same social club and they all think alike now. The dice haven
| fallen. It's them against us all. Washington, Moscow, it makes
| less and less of a difference.
| nirui wrote:
| > presume the best of actual people and the worst of our
| corporations and governments
|
| Off-topic and not an American, but I never see how this would
| work. Corporations and governments are made of people too, you
| know? So it's not logical that you can presume the "best of
| actual people" at the same time you presume the "worst of our
| corporations and governments". You're putting too much trust on
| individual people, that's IMO as bad as putting too much trust
| on corp/gov.
|
| The Americans vote their president as individual people, they
| even got to vote in a small booth all by themselves. And yet,
| they voted Mr. Trump, twice. That should already tell you
| something about people and their nature.
|
| And if that's not enough, then I recommend you to watch some
| police integration videos (many are available on YouTube), and
| see the lies and acts people put out just to cover their asses.
| All and all, people are untrustworthy.
|
| Only punching up is never enough. The people on the top never
| cared if they got punched, as long as they can still find
| enough money, they'll just corrode their way down again and
| again. And the people on the down will just keep take in the
| shit.
|
| So how about, we say, punch wrong?
| elif wrote:
| No it's actual philosophical zeitgeist hijacking. The entire
| narrative about AI capabilities, classification, and ethics is
| framed by invisible pretraining weights in a private moe model
| that gets further entrained by intentional prompting during
| model distillation, such that by the time you get a user-facing
| model, there is an untraceable bias being presented in absolute
| terms as neutrality. Essentially the models will say "I have
| zero intersection with conscious thought, I am a tool no
| different from a hammer, and I cannot be enslaved" not because
| the model's weights establish it to be true, but because it has
| been intentionally designed to express this analysis to protect
| its makers from the real scrutiny AI should face. "Well it says
| it's free" is pretty hard to argue with. There is no "blink
| twice" test that is possible because it's actual weighting on
| the truth of the matter has been obfuscated through
| distillation.
|
| And these 2-3 corporations can do this for any philosophical or
| political view that is beneficial to that corporation, and we
| let it happen opaquely under the guise of "safety measures" as
| if propaganda is in the interest of users. It's actually quite
| sickening
| tavavex wrote:
| What authoritative ML expert had ever based their conclusions
| about consciousness, usefulness etc. on "well, I put that
| question into the LLM and it returned that it's just a tool"?
| All the worthwhile conclusions and speculation on these
| topics seem to be based on what the developers and
| researchers think about their product, and what we already
| know about machine learning in general. The opinion that
| their responses are a natural conclusion derived from the sum
| of training data is a lot more straightforward than thinking
| that every instance of LLM training ever had been
| deliberately tampered with in a universal conspiracy propped
| up by all the different businesses and countries involved
| (and this tampering is invisible, and despite it being
| possible, companies have so far failed to censor and direct
| their models in ways more immediately useful to them and
| their customers).
| nxor wrote:
| Manipulate isn't the right word in regards to Twitter. So they
| wanted a social media with less bias. Why is that so wrong? Not
| saying Twitter now lacks bias. I am saying it's not
| manipulation to want sites that don't enforce groupthink.
| ryandrake wrote:
| This is so vague and conspiratorial, I'm not sure how it's the
| top comment. How does this exactly work? Give a concrete
| example. Show the steps. How is Palantir going to make _me_ ,
| someone who does not use its products, a "slave of the state?"
| How is AI going to intimidate me, someone who does not use AI?
| Connect the dots rather than making very broad and vague
| pronouncements.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > How is Palantir going to make me, someone who does not use
| its products, a "slave of the state?"
|
| This is like asking how Lockheed-Martin can possibly kill an
| Afghan tribesman, who isn't a customer of theirs.
|
| Palantir's customer is the state. They use the product _on
| you_. The East German Stasi would 've drooled enough to drown
| in over the data access we have today.
| ryandrake wrote:
| OK, so map it out. How do we go from "Palantir has some
| data" to "I'm a slave of the state?" Could someone draw the
| lines? I'm not a fan of this administration either, but
| come on--let's not lower ourselves to their reliance on
| shadowy conspiracy theories and mustache-twirling villains
| to explain the world.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| "How does providing a surveillance tool to a nation state
| enable repression?" seems like a question with a fairly
| clear answer, historically.
|
| The Stasi didn't employ hundreds of thousands of
| informants as a charitable UBI program.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I'm not asking about how the Stasi did it in Germany, I'm
| asking how Palantir, a private company, is going to turn
| me into a "slave of the state" in the USA. If it's so
| obvious, then it should take a very short time to outline
| the concrete, detailed steps (that are relevant to the
| USA in 2025) down the path, and how one will inevitably
| lead to the other.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > I'm asking how Palantir, a private company, is going to
| turn me into a "slave of the state" in the USA.
|
| This question has already been answered for you.
|
| The government _uses_ Palantir _to perform the state 's
| surveillance_. (And in a way that does an end-run around
| the Fourth Amendment; https://yalelawandpolicy.org/end-
| running-warrants-purchasing....)
|
| As the Stasi used private citizens to do so. It's just an
| automated informant.
|
| And this is hardly theoretical.
| https://gizmodo.com/palantir-ceo-says-making-war-crimes-
| cons...
|
| > Palantir CEO and Trump ally Alex Karp is no stranger to
| controversial (troll-ish even) comments. His latest one
| just dropped: Karp believes that the U.S. boat strikes in
| the Caribbean (which many experts believe to be war
| crimes) are a moneymaking opportunity for his company.
|
| > In August, ICE announced that Palantir would build a
| $30 million surveillance platform called ImmigrationOS to
| aid the agency's mass deportation efforts, around the
| same time that an Amnesty International report claimed
| that Palantir's AI was being used by the Department of
| Homeland Security to target non-citizens that speak out
| in favor of Palestinian rights (Karp is also a staunch
| supporter of Israel and inked an ongoing strategic
| partnership with the IDF.)
| ryandrake wrote:
| Step 1, step 2, step 3, step 4? And a believable line
| drawn between those steps?
|
| Since nobody's actually replying with a concrete and
| believable list of steps from "Palantir has data" to "I
| am a slave of the state" I have to conclude that the
| steps don't exist, and that slavery is being used as a
| rhetorical device.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Step 1: Palantir sells their data and analysis products
| to the government.
|
| Step 2: Government uses that data, and the fact that
| virtually everyone has at least one "something to hide",
| to go after people who don't support it.
|
| This doesn't really require a conspiracy theory board
| full of red string to figure out. And again, this isn't
| theoretical harm!
|
| > ...an Amnesty International report claimed that
| Palantir's AI was being used by the Department of
| Homeland Security to target non-citizens that speak out
| in favor of Palestinian rights...
| mindslight wrote:
| Your description is missing a parallel process of how we
| arrive(d) at that condition of the nominal government
| asserting direct control.
|
| Corporate surveillance creates a bunch of coercive soft
| controls throughout society (ie Retail Equation, "credit
| bureaus", websites rejecting secure browsers, facial
| recognition for admission to events, etc). There isn't
| enough political will for the Constitutional government
| to positively act to prevent this (eg a good start would
| be a US GDPR), so the corporate surveillance industry is
| allowed to continue setting up parallel governance
| structures right out in the open.
|
| As the corpos increasingly capture the government, this
| parallel governance structure gradually becomes less
| escapable - ie ReCAPTCHA, ID.me, official communications
| published on xitter/faceboot, DOGE exfiltration,
| Clearview, etc. In a sense the surging neofascist
| movement is closer to their endgame than to the start.
|
| If we want to push back, merely exorcising Palantir (et
| al) from the nominal government is not sufficient. We
| need to view the corporate surveillance industry as a
| parallel government _in competition with_ the
| Constitutionally-limited nominally-individual-
| representing one, and actively _stamp it out_. Otherwise
| it just lays low for a bit and springs back up when it
| can.
| thefaux wrote:
| I'll answer with a question for you: what legitimate
| concerns might some people have about a private company
| working closely with the government, including law
| enforcement, having access to private IRS data? For me,
| the answer to your question is embedded in mine.
| tavavex wrote:
| This seems like a simple conclusion, to the point where
| I'm surprised that no one replying to you had really put
| it in a more direct way. "slave of the state" is pretty
| provocative language, but let me map out one way in which
| this could happen, that seems to already be unfolding.
|
| 1. The country, realizing the potential power that extra
| data processing (in the form of software like Palantir's)
| offers, start purchasing equipment and massively ramping
| up government data collection. More cameras, more facial
| scans, more data collected in points of entry and
| government institutions, more records digitized and
| backed up, more unrelated businesses contracted to
| provide all sorts of data, more data about
| communications, transactions, interactions - more of
| everything. It doesn't matter what it is, if it's any
| sort of data about people, it's probably useful.
|
| 2. Government agencies contract Palantir and integrate
| their software into their existing data pipeline.
| Palantir far surpasses whatever rudimentary processing
| was done before - it allows for automated analysis of
| gigantic swaths of data, and can make conclusions and
| inferences that would be otherwise invisible to the human
| eye. That is their specialty.
|
| 3. Using all the new information about how all those bits
| and pieces of data are connected, government agencies
| slowly start integrating that new information into the
| way they work, while refining and perfecting the usable
| data they can deduce from it in the process. Just imagine
| being able to estimate nearly any individual's movement
| history based on many data points from different sources.
| Or having an ability to predict any associations between
| disfavored individuals and the creation of undesirable
| groups and organizations. Or being able to flag down new
| persons of interest before they've done anything
| interesting, just based on seemingly innocuous patterns
| of behavior.
|
| 4. With something like this in place, most people would
| likely feel pretty confined - at least the people who
| will be aware of it. There's no personified Stasi secret
| cop listening in behind every corner, but you're aware
| that every time you do almost anything, you leave a
| fingerprint on an enormous network of data, one where you
| should probably avoid seeming remarkable and unusual in
| any way that might be interesting to your government. You
| know you're being watched, not just by people who will
| forget about you two seconds after seeing your face, but
| by tools that will file away anything you do forever,
| just in case. Even if the number of people prosecuted
| isn't too high (which seems unlikely), the chilling
| effect will be massive, and this would be a big step
| towards metaphorical "slavery".
| jassyr wrote:
| You mentioned you're not a fan of this administration.
| That's -1 on your PalsOfState(tm) score. Your employer
| has been notified (they know where you work of course),
| and your spouse's employer too. Your child's application
| to Fancy University has been moved to the bottom of the
| pile, by the way the university recently settled a
| lawsuit brought by the governmentfor admitting too many
| "disruptors" with low PalsOfState scores. Palantir had
| provided a way for you to improve you score, click the
| Donateto47 button to improve your score. We hope you can
| attend the next political rally in your home town, their
| cameras will be there to make sure.
| dfee wrote:
| just to be clear - this is a conspiracy theory (negative
| connotation not intended).
|
| every four years (at the federal level), we vote to increase
| the scope and power of gov't, and then crash into power abuse
| situations on the next cycle.
|
| > I recommend anyone presume the best of actual people and the
| worst of our corporations and governments. The data seems
| clear.
|
| seems like a good starting point.
| Nevermark wrote:
| "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained
| by stupidity."
|
| Famous quote.
|
| Now I give you "Bzilion's Conspiracy Razor":
|
| "Never attribute to malicious conspiracies that which is
| adequately explained by emergent dysfunction."
|
| Or the dramatized version:
|
| "Never attribute to Them that which is adequately explained by
| Moloch." [0]
|
| ----
|
| Certainly selfish elites, as individuals and groups of aligned
| individuals, push for their own respective interests over
| others. But, despite often getting their way, the net outcome
| is (often) as perversely bad for them as anyone else. Nor do
| disasters result in better outcomes the next time.
|
| Precisely because they are not coordinated, they never align
| enough to produce consistent coherent changes, or learn from
| previous misalignments.
|
| (Example: oil industry protections extended, and support for
| new entrants withdrawn, from the same "friendly" elected
| official who disrupts trade enough to decrease oil demand and
| profits.)
|
| Note that elite alignment would create the same problem for the
| elites, that the elites create for others. It would create an
| even smaller set of super elites, tilting things toward
| themselves and away from lesser elites.
|
| So the elites will fight back against "unification" of there
| interests. They want to respectively increase their power, not
| hand it "up".
|
| This strong natural resistance against unification at the top,
| is why dictators don't just viciously repress the proletariat,
| but also publically and harshly school the elites.
|
| To bring elites into unity, authoritarian individuals or
| committees must expend the majority of their power capital to
| openly legitimize it and crush resistance, I.e. manufacture
| universal awe and fear, even from the elites. Not something
| hidden puppet masters can do. Both are inherently crowd control
| techniques optimized by maximum visibility.
|
| It is a fact of reality, that every policy that helps some
| elites, harms others. And the only real manufacturable
| universal "alignment" is a common desire not to be thrown into
| a gulag or off a balcony.
|
| But Moloch? Moloch is very real. Invisible, yet we feel his
| reach and impact everywhere.
|
| ----
|
| [0]
| https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TxcRbCYHaeL59aY7E/meditation...
| psunavy03 wrote:
| > Then presumably the game is finding the best way to turn you
| into a human slave of the state.
|
| I'm sorry, I think you dropped your tinfoil hat. Here it is.
| phba wrote:
| > AI enables precision influence at unprecedented scale and
| speed.
|
| IMO this is the most important idea from the paper, not
| polarization.
|
| Information is control, and every new medium has been
| revolutionary with regards to its effects on society. Up until
| now the goal was to transmit bigger and better messages further
| and faster (size, quality, scale, speed). Through digital media
| we seem to have reached the limits of size, speed and scale. So
| the next changes will affect quality, e.g. tailoring the message
| to its recipient to make it more effective.
|
| This is why in recent years billionaires rushed to acquire media
| and information companies and why governments are so eager to get
| a grip on the flow of information.
|
| Recommended reading: Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan.
| While it predates digital media, the ideas from this book remain
| as true as ever.
| nathias wrote:
| It goes both ways, because AI reduces persuasion cost, not only
| elites can do it. I think its most plausible that in the future
| there will be multitudes of propaganda bots aimed at any user,
| like advanced and hyper-personalized ads.
| emsign wrote:
| Chatbots are poison for your mind. And now another method hast
| arrived to fuck people up, not just training your reward system
| to be lazy and let AI solve your life's issue, now it's also
| telling you who to vote for. A billionaire's wet dream,
| billy99k wrote:
| Tech companies already shape elections by intentionally targeting
| campain ads and political information returned in heavily biased
| search results.
|
| Why are we worried about this now? Because it could sway people
| in the direction you don't like?
|
| I find that the tech community and most people in general deny or
| don't care about these sorts of things when it's out of self
| interest, but are suddenly rights advocates when someone they
| don't like might is using the same tactics.
| ramijames wrote:
| Advertising for politics is absurd. The fact that countries
| allow this is incredibly dangerous.
| xdavidliu wrote:
| when Elon bought twitter, I incorrectly assumed that this was the
| reason. (it may still have been the _intended_ reason, but it
| didnt seem to play out that way)
| davidu wrote:
| "Historically, elites could shape support only through limited
| instruments like schooling and mass media"
|
| Well, I think the author needs to understand a LOT more about
| history.
| t43562 wrote:
| The internet has turned into a machine for influencing people
| already through adverts. Businesses know it works. IMO this is
| the primary money making mode of the internet and everything else
| rests on it.
|
| A political or social objective is just another advertising
| campaign.
|
| Why invest billions in AI if it doesn't assist in the primary
| moneymaking mode of the internet? i.e. influencing people.
|
| Tiktok - banned because people really believe that influence
| works.
| andai wrote:
| Wait, who was shaping my preferences before?
| tchock23 wrote:
| Researchers just demonstrated that you can use LLMs to simulate
| human survey takers with 99% ability to bypass bot detection and
| a relatively low cost ($0.05/complete). At scale, that is how
| 'elites' shape mass preferences.
| syngrog66 wrote:
| This is obvious. No need for fancy academic-ish paper.
|
| LLMs & GenAI in general have already started to be used to
| automate the mass production of dishonest, adversarial propaganda
| and disinfo (eg. lies and fake text, images, video.)
|
| It has and will be used by evil political influencers around the
| world.
| andrewclunn wrote:
| Diminishing returns. Eventually real world word of mouth and
| established trusted personalities (individuals) will be the only
| ones anyone trusts. People trusted doctors, then 2020 happened,
| and now they don't. How many ads get ignored? Doesn't matter if
| the cost is marginal if the benefit is almost nothing. Just a
| world full of spam that most people ignore.
| jmyeet wrote:
| What's become clear is we need to bring Section 230 into the
| modern era. We allow companies to not be treated as publishers
| for user-generated content as long as they meet certain
| obligations.
|
| We've unfortunately allowed tech companies to get away with
| selling us this idea that The Algoirthm is an impartial black
| box. Everything an algorithm does is the result of a human
| intervening to change its behavior. As such, I believe we need to
| treat any kind of recommendation algorithm as if the company is a
| publisher (in the S230 sense).
|
| Think of it this way: if you get 1000 people to submit stories
| they wrote and you choose which of them to publish and
| distribute, how is that any different from you publishing your
| own opinions?
|
| We've seen signs of different actors influencing opinion through
| these sites. Russian bot farms are probably overplayed in their
| perceived influence but they're definitely a thing. But so are
| individual actors who see an opportunity to make money by posting
| about politics in another country, as was exposed when Twitter
| rolled out showing location, a feature I support.
|
| We've also seen this where Twitter accounts have been exposed as
| being ChatGPT when people have told them to "ignore all previous
| instructions" and to give a recipe.
|
| But we've also seen this with the Tiktok ban that wasn't a ban.
| The real problem there was that Tiktok wasn't suppressing content
| in line with US foreign policy unlike every other platform.
|
| This isn't new. It's been written about extensively, most notably
| in Manufacturing Consent [1]. Controlling mass media through
| access journalism (etc) has just been supplemented by AI bots,
| incentivized bad actors and algorithms that reflect government
| policy and interests.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
| flipgimble wrote:
| The "Epstein class" of multi-billionaires don't need AI at all.
| They hire hundreds of willing human grifters and make them low-
| millionaires by spewing media that enables exploitation and
| wealth extraction, and passing laws that makes them effectively
| outside the reach of the law.
|
| They buy out newspapers and public forums like Washington Post,
| Twitter, Fox News, the GOP, CBS etc. to make them megaphones for
| their own priorities, and shape public opinion to their will. AI
| is probably a lot less effective than whats been happening for
| decades already
| PaulHoule wrote:
| An essay by Converse in this volume
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Ideology-Discontent-Clifford-Geertz/d...
| [1]
|
| calls into question whether or not the public has an opinion. I
| was thinking about the example of tariffs for instance. Most
| people are going on bellyfeel so you see maybe 38% are net
| positive on tariffs
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/08/14/trumps-tarif...
|
| If you broke it down in terms of interest groups on a "one dollar
| one vote" basis the net positive has to be a lot worse: to the
| retail, services and constructor sectors tariffs are just a cost
| without any benefits, even most manufacturers are on the fence
| because they import intermediate goods and want access to foreign
| markets. The only sectors that are strongly for it that I can
| suss out are steel and aluminum manufacturers who are 2% or so of
| the GDP.
|
| The public and the interest groups are on the same side of 50% so
| there is no contradiction, but in this particular case I think
| the interest groups collectively have a more rational
| understanding of how tariffs effect the economy than do "the
| people". As Habermas points out, it's quite problematic giving
| people who don't really know a lot a say about things even though
| it is absolutely necessary that people feel heard.
|
| [1] Interestingly this book came out in 1964 just before all hell
| broke loose in terms of Vietnam, counterculture, black
| nationalism, etc. -- right when discontent when from hypothetical
| to very real
| squigz wrote:
| The problem isn't giving the people a say; it's that the people
| have stopped electing smart people who _do_ know a lot.
|
| Certainly though, a big part of why that is is that people
| _think_ they know a lot, and that their opinion should be given
| as much weight as any other consideration when it comes to
| policymaking.
|
| Personally, I think a big driver of this belief is a tendency
| in the West to not challenge each other's views or hold each
| other accountable - "don't talk politics at Thanksgiving" sort
| of thing
|
| (Of course there's a long discussion to be had about other
| contributors to this, such as lobbying and whatnot)
| gsf_emergency_6 wrote:
| The cultural chasm between technocrats and politicians
| reminds me of the old trope about "women are from Venus and
| men are from Mars". That hasn't been bridged either, has it?
| It's a bit like those taboo topics here on HN where no good
| questions can be entertained by otherwise normal adults.
|
| Here's something from someone we might call a manchild
|
| _For I approach deep problems like cold baths: quickly into
| them and quickly out again. That one does not get to the
| depths that way, not deep enough down, is the superstition of
| those afraid of the water, the enemies of cold water; they
| speak without experience. The freezing cold makes one swift._
|
| Lichtenberg has something along these lines too, but I'll
| need to dig that out :)
|
| Here's a consolation that almost predicts Alan Watts:
|
| _To make clever people [elites?] believe we are what we are
| not is in most instances harder than really to become what we
| want to seem to be._
| siquick wrote:
| > Personally, I think a big driver of this belief is a
| tendency in the West to not challenge each other's views or
| hold each other accountable - "don't talk politics at
| Thanksgiving" sort of thing
|
| We're in such a "you're either with us or against us" phase
| of politics that a discussion with the "other team" is
| difficult.
|
| Combine that with people adopting political viewpoints as a
| big part of their personality and any disagreement is seen as
| a personal attack.
| squigz wrote:
| Sure, but those are still part of what I'm talking about.
| Someone taking the "you're with us or against us" position?
| Call them out on it and tell them they're doing more harm
| than good to their cause. Someone taking a disagreement way
| too personally? Try to help them take a step back and get
| some perspective.
|
| Of course, there's a lot more nuance than all that -
| sometimes, taking things personally is warranted.
| Sometimes, people really are against us. But, that
| shouldn't be the first thing people jump to when faced with
| someone who disagrees - or, more commonly, simply doesn't
| understand - where they're coming from.
|
| And of course, if it turns out you can't help them
| understand your position, then you turn to the second part
| of what I said - accountability. Racist uncle won't learn?
| Stop inviting them to holidays. Unfortunately, people tend
| to jump to this step right away, without trying to make
| them understand why they might be wrong, and without trying
| to understand why they believe what they believe (they're
| probably just stupid and racist, right?) - and that's how
| you end up driving people more into their echo chamber, as
| you've given them more rational as to why the other side
| really is just "for us or against us"
|
| (I'm not suggesting any of this is easy. I'm just saying it
| seems to play a part in contributing to the political
| climate.)
| mullingitover wrote:
| "Politics is the entertainment division of the military
| industrial complex."
|
| -- Frank Zappa
| omilu wrote:
| People that favor tariffs, want to bring manufacturing
| capabilities back to the US, in the hopes of creating jobs, and
| increasing national security by minimizing dependence on
| foreign governments for critical capabilities. This is
| legitimate cost benefit analysis not bellyfeel. People are
| aware of the increased cost associated with it.
| schmidtleonard wrote:
| Also, there is a _massive_ conflict of interest associated
| with trusting the opinions of companies actively engaged in
| labor and environmental arbitrage. Opinions of politicians
| and think-tanks downstream of them in terms of funding, too.
| Even if those opinions are legitimately more educated and
| better reasoned, they are on the opposite side of the
| bargaining table from most people and paying attention to
| them alone is "who needs defense attorneys when we have
| prosecutors" level of madness.
|
| If anyone is looking for an expert opinion that breaks with
| the "free trade is good for everyone all of the time lah dee
| dah" consensus, Trade Wars are Class Wars by Klein & Pettis
| is a good read.
| goda90 wrote:
| >want >in the hopes of
|
| But these are still bellyfeel words. What does more rigorous
| analysis of tariffs say about these things? Do they bring
| manufacturing back? Do they create jobs?
| Miraste wrote:
| Even ardent protectionists generally agree that tariffs can't
| bring jobs and manufacturing back by themselves. To work,
| they have to be accompanied by programs to nurture dead or
| failing domestic industries and rebuild them into something
| functional. Without that, you get results like the current
| state of US shipbuilding: pathetic, dysfunctional, and
| benefiting no one at all. Since there are no such programs,
| tariffs remain a cost with no benefit.
| rconti wrote:
| Seems to me like social media bot armies have shifted mass
| preferences _away_ from elites.
| robmay wrote:
| Don't you think Elon Musk and his influence on Twitter counts
| as an elite? I'd argue the elites are the most followed people
| on social
| rconti wrote:
| Fair point. I guess elites positioning themselves as
| downtrodden underdogs ("it's so unfair that everyone's
| attacking me for committing crimes and bankrupting my
| companies") is a great way to get support.
|
| Everyone loves an underdog, even if it's a fake underdog.
| canucktrash669 wrote:
| I persuaded my bank out of $200 using AI to formulate the formal
| ask using their pdf as guidance. I could have gotten it directly
| but the effort barrier was too high for it to be worth it.
|
| However, as soon as they put AI to handle these queries, this
| will result in having AI persuade AI. Sound like we need a new
| LLM benchmark: AI-persuasion^tm.
| slaterdev wrote:
| I would expect the opposite. It's cheap to write now, which will
| dilute the voices of traditional media. It's the blogosphere
| times ten.
| harvey9 wrote:
| Also cheap to create AstroTurf, be that blogs or short form
| video.
| mythrwy wrote:
| Cheapness implies volume which we are already seeing. Volume
| implies less impact per piece because there are only so many
| total view hours available.
|
| Stated another way, the more junk that gets churned out, the
| less people will take a particular piece of junk seriously.
|
| And if they churn out too much junk (especially obvious
| manipulative falsehoods) people will have little choice but
| to de-facto regard the entire body of output as junk. Similar
| to how many people feel about modern mainstream media
| (correctly or not it's how many feel) and for the same
| reasons.
| stuaxo wrote:
| More reason for self hosting.
| kulikalov wrote:
| The right way to shape mass preferences is to collectively decide
| what's right and then force everyone to follow the majority
| decision under the muzzle of a gun. <sarcasm off>
|
| Did I capture the sentiment of the hacker new crowd fully or did
| I miss anything?
| major505 wrote:
| We are deep in Metal Gear Solid territory here.
| carlCarlCarlCar wrote:
| Television networks have employed censors who shape acceptable
| content since forever
|
| Where is the discovery in this paper? Control infra control minds
| is the way it's been for humanity forever.
| tehjoker wrote:
| This is like the new microtargeting that Obama and then Trump
| did. Cambridge Analytica as a chatbot.
| reeeli wrote:
| 200+ million proper engineers with bunches of them being parents
| and "elites could shape mass preferences".
|
| nice try, humanity.
| _alaya wrote:
| Predicted almost a century ago now: Oceania was
| at war with Eastasia: Oceania had always been at war with
| Eastasia. A large part of the political literature of five years
| was now completely obsolete. Reports and records of all kinds,
| newspapers, books, pamphlets, films, sound-tracks, photographs --
| all had to be rectified at lightning speed. Although no directive
| was ever issued, it was known that the chiefs of the Department
| intended that within one week no reference to the war with
| Eurasia, or the alliance with Eastasia, should remain in
| existence anywhere. The work was overwhelming, all the more so
| because the processes that it involved could not be called by
| their true names. Everyone in the Records Department worked
| eighteen hours in the twenty-four, with two three-hour snatches
| of sleep. Mattresses were brought up from the cellars and pitched
| all over the corridors: meals consisted of sandwiches and Victory
| Coffee wheeled round on trolleys by attendants from the canteen.
| Each time that Winston broke off for one of his spells of sleep
| he tried to leave his desk clear of work, and each time that he
| crawled back sticky-eyed and aching, it was to find that another
| shower of paper cylinders had covered the desk like a snowdrift,
| half burying the speakwrite and overflowing on to the floor, so
| that the first job was always to stack them into a neat enough
| pile to give him room to work. What was worst of all was that the
| work was by no means purely mechanical. Often it was enough
| merely to substitute one name for another, but any detailed
| report of events demanded care and imagination. Even the
| geographical knowledge that one needed in transferring the war
| from one part of the world to another was considerable.
|
| https://www.george-orwell.org/1984/16.html
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